Spain is set to become the first Western nation to make paid menstrual leave a right for people who experience severe period pain.
The draft reform, expected to be approved by Spain's cabinet next Tuesday, would grant women up to three days of paid menstrual leave from work each month.
"It is important to clarify what a painful period is — we are not talking about a slight discomfort, but about serious symptoms such as diarrhoea, severe headaches, fever," Angela Rodriguez, Spain's secretary of state for equality, told the Barcelona-based El Periodico newspaper in March.
A few other countries outside Europe, including Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Zambia, already grant menstrual leave at a national level.
Spain's policy is part of a reform package centred around menstrual and reproductive health, which also includes schools being required to provide sanitary products to students who need them.
Value-added tax (VAT) would be scrapped from the price of pads and tampons, sanitary pads and tampons would be provided free to women in "marginalised social circumstances", and the requirement for 16- and 17-year-olds to have parental permission for an abortion would be removed.
How does Australia compare?
Leak-proof apparel brand Modibodi is one of the few Australian businesses that offers specific menstrual leave to its workers.
Since May last year, it's provided its staff with 10 days per year of paid menstrual, menopause and miscarriage leave, on top of existing sick leave.
"One of the main reasons we wanted to introduce it was to help further normalise the conversation around a lot of very common and normal health issues," Modibodi founder and CEO Kristy Chong told SBS News.
Modibodi founder and CEO Kristy Chong. Credit: Supplied
A 2018 study from Western Sydney University found 90 per cent of women aged 14 to 25 had experienced period pain in the previous three months, and 40 per cent had taken a day off work, school or university because of it.
Others who hadn't taken the day off said they were unable to concentrate or work as well as they otherwise would.
Ms Chong said depending on their circumstances, Modibodi's employees can choose to either take time off from work completely or work from home.
She said it's already shown to improve staff productivity and engagement.
That experience is echoed at Future Super, which introduced its own menstrual and menopausal leave in January last year.
The retail superannuation fund provides permanent employees with up to six days of paid leave per year if they're unable to perform their usual work duties because of their symptoms — mirroring its mental health leave policy.
It was developed in consultation with Victorian Women's Trust, which lead the way in 2017 with its own menstrual leave policy.
"About 42 per cent of the team to whom the policy applies have accessed the leave in some form, to the tune of about 140 hours across the business, which is about 18 and-a-half days," Future Super's chief people officer Leigh Dunlop told SBS News.
"So on average, the business is providing an additional 1.3 days of leave per month that we weren't previously providing."
Future Super's chief people officer, Leigh Dunlop. Credit: Supplied
"Conversations particularly around menopause, we weren't having them before as a business, and so that's been a really cool, sort of flow-on effect of having the policy in place," she said.
"One of our male team members actually created a bloodied period pad emoji on our Slack channel, and people who are accessing menstruation leave will often throw that up in their Slack status."
Ms Dunlop said she would like to see whichever party wins government in the 21 May election to follow Spain's lead and look at introducing a national menstrual leave policy.
"A question I get often is if employers were made to provide this leave, is there a financial disincentive to then hire women because of the cost associated?" she said.
"What we've seen is that the uptake is quite small, but the engagement and the goodwill, and just the sort of the energy that comes from our employees feeling supported, far outweighs the, to be frank, negligible cost of implementing this policy."
In the absence of national leadership on the issue, Ms Chong said she would encourage every business to consider introducing its own policy.
"They should consult with their employees to develop a policy that best addresses the needs of the employees," she said.
Ms Chong said after the success of its menstruation and menopause policy, Modibodi is now exploring the possibility of introducing additional paid leave for workers with chronic health conditions.
"People don't ask for them; they're a part of their life, they're something they have to cope and deal with, and I think that workplaces should be more supportive and compassionate to that."
