Currently, there are no federal policies in the United States specifically addressing menstrual leave. Some women experience severe symptoms during their menstrual cycles, including debilitating pain from conditions like Endometriosis, Hormonal Imbalances, Ovarian Cysts, which can significantly impact their ability to work or attend school.
I’m advocating for a policy that includes flexible work and school options for biological women.
Potential accommodations :
Allowing work from home options during menstruation, or light duty work.
Additional sick leave, PTO, or excused absence for menstrual related symptoms.
Flexible scheduling options to accommodate severe symptoms.
This is when you need to go to your doctor and bring in notes to prove to be excused for your absences and or get authorized time off. I see many people taking advantage of this policy, just to get time away from work and or school. No one should be paid during these times because women would be getting practically a extra week off every month. That’s not fair at all to everyone else who just deals with it. It’s part of being a woman.
There is no need for “menstrual“ leave. It falls under any other kind of sick leave. This could be taken advantage of in a bad way. If you are a biological woman, you need to learn to deal with it just like the rest of us. And I can speak very candidly about this because I fell in this category for many years, and I dealt with it in high school, several years in the military, and the private sector, finally having to have a hysterectomy in my late thirties . So I speak from experience.
As a woman that also deals with reproductive issues, and from my own personal experiences with women suffering from symptoms that go completely undiagnosed, I think a lot of us are tired of being a “man about it”.
Also, just because some bad apples would try to abuse a policy addressing some of these issues, doesn’t mean that all women have to suffer for it. It’s like with any other policy out there. A good policy that could balance that out would also be great. I’m just throwing out ideas . That’s what this platform is for.
It’s good to talk about. In fact I think we need more conversation, education, and healthy debate about women’s health issues……especially with young girls starting their cycles earlier, as young as 8yo, and some women starting peri menopause in their 30’s. But that’s another topic.
Thank you for contributing your stories and opinions on this issue.
@Mircia This was basically my exact thought. Maybe investigating the root of why women experience these symptoms and what treatments can be developed would be better in the long run…I don’t want these symptoms at work…but I also don’t want them at home.
This would be amazing, I supper from dysmenorrhea and PMDD and it takes a toll on me. I had to leave school early because i couldn’t handle it anymore. I get weakness, tiredness, irritability and extreme pain on my periods. Something like this would change my life. Some people do not realize how much pain I am in.
Increasing exercise and improving our food quality may take care of these symptoms. The incidence has risen with obesity, sedentary lifestyle, and decreases in nutrition. The causes need to be researched more, including diet, nutrients in food, vaccinations, and exercise.
I understand how disruptive it can be. It’s one reason we started homeschooling. However, creating a policy to accommodate menorrhagia, PCOD, or dysmenorrhea will lead to abuse (women), resentment (women and men), and will give more reasons to not hire women in the first place. Women already fight to be taken seriously in the workplace.
I absolutely agree, it’s going to be hard to make a policy that would fairly balance that out. The core issues need to be addressed. I’m super excited about Robert F. Kennedy Jr, MAHA , and Calley and Casey Means bringing to light things like Metabolic Syndrome, chemicals in our food, especially endocrine disrupting chemicals … the list goes on.
Addressing that is going to have a HUGE impact on women’s health. And hopefully a policy like this won’t be needed at all.
The question needs to be asked–Why are so many women experiencing this in today’s world when it did not seem to be a problem 50 or 60 years ago. When I was a young girl we may have had one or two girls in our entire class that needed some type of menstrual accomodation. Now it’s ubiquitous. Something is going on that is not normal and natural. What’s the cause, and let’s fix it. Women should not have to suffer so much for something that is a natural, normal life process. Until they do, accomodations are reasonable, but it would probably create an escalation in the number of women who take advantage of the policy unnecessarily. You’d have to control for misuse of such a policy.
And like you, many women suffer in silence, undiagnosed for years, and are told to “endure it , it’s part of being a woman”, “man up”, and we have and do.
A policy that addresses any of this may be a shot in the dark, but having a healthy conversation is just as important to me.
Even sharing stories, ideas, alternative treatments, would be a great benefit to us all. And maybe I just don’t personally see it enough, but I really think we need more information and education out there about hormonal changes as we age as well.
Hopefully within the next year the MAHA✨ movement brings the change we need in the things that are affecting our hormones and reproductive health, like endocrine disrupting chemicals in our food supply.
Agreed! Great point.
The core issues needs to be addressed. I think it will be with RFK heading the US Department of Health and Human Services. It’s the chemicals in our food supply…. And sadly, there’s a long list of chemicals effecting our hormones.
Although these are very good ideas and well covered material, I can see federal policy being adopted for federal employees, yet I don’t think it would work for mandating such a thing across the entire country, impacing every private business from coast to coast. I would think that we dont want to have the federal government mandating how private companies govern their employees – that could quickly turn into a nightmare and would seriously impact national productivity as well as, serve as a regulatory, and investigative drain on American resources with menstral-related complaints and compiance administration. Besides, it would not be fair to burden small private businesses with this issue. If someone has a disability which prohibits them from working a normal job, they probably shouldnt be trying to get the job in the first place, only to later tell their employer that they cannot perform the job, for whatever reason. People become disabled all of the time, and we don’t ask the company to change its policies to accomodate that disability at the expense of becoming less profitable for it. Its just not feasable in our society, right?
As Kathie suggests, it might be better if we get to the root cause of the issue, and see what chemicals in our products and environment might be causing this to be more of an issue than it was 50 years+ ago.
Women got the vote, got equality, got access to the workforce. Now the government gets to tax both spouses, rather than just the one, and many families now HAVE to have both spouses to work to keep up with inflation, and the cost of big government. But women aren’t content with “equality” and access to the workforce. Now they want special government programs, and privileges, that require MORE government, and personnelto enforce. Women give no thought to where the money comes from, and who has to foot the bill. They just want things, and don’t do any accounting of who the costs are imposed on.
The very suggestion of getting paid leave, something for nothing, for Women to do nothing and get paid for it, while extracting MY tax money to fund it is asinine. These notions are evidence that women vote increasingly out of self interest, and lack the ability to vote for the whole. This makes women a political special interest group at war with the rest of society. This makes women a political enemy, in that they no longer want to cooperate with men in producing families and children, but want to forgo the latter, and compete with men in the workforce, and Co opt benefits. Marraige rates, are down. Birth rates are down. Women are replacing men with the state. They seek the state to be their daddy.
You want to take more tax dollars to fund more frivolous government programs? That makes women my political enemy.
Repeal the 19th. Remove women from the workforce. If women want access to status and resources, get married and be an asset to society by being a good wife and mother. And not by stealing from the tax base.
I agree 100 %!!! I’m sick and tired of BS excuses as to why young people should not work as hard as others before them, and why it is good that they suck the lifeblood from everyone else who has done their time working through pain, torn ligaments, the flu. This generation is a bunch of weak wussies.
While I understand the concern behind the proposal for menstrual leave—to accommodate women who suffer from painful cycles—this is not a role the federal government should be stepping into. Employment regulations are best managed at the local or corporate level, where businesses can make decisions based on their unique circumstances and the needs of their employees. A federal mandate on this would add an unnecessary layer of complexity to already existing workplace policies.
Instead of pushing for government-mandated policies like menstrual leave, we should focus on creating a society where more families can live on a single income. This would allow women (and men) to make the personal choice to prioritize family life, reducing the pressure to remain in the workforce during times of physical discomfort or personal need. Tim Carney in Family Unfriendly highlights how economic pressures often push families to prioritize income over family life, leading to situations where women must choose between work and personal health. Supporting families with policies that promote single-income households could alleviate much of this burden.
By creating a culture where family well-being is prioritized, and workplace flexibility is the norm, we’d be in a better position to provide real support, rather than relying on top-down, one-size-fits-all government policies.
There are plenty of us who remain in the workforce and don’t do this BS this particularly spoiled individual proposes. This is not a “women” thing- it’s a coddled, spoiled, deluded lazy youth, socialist thing.
Newsflash: we have, until the Biden administration, had a very successful society. The last four years have plummeted people in division and created an entire generation who wants a never-ending flow of money from other people. These kids, like this silly person proposing this leave here, have a serious sense of delusion about reality, who pays for their expensive, totally unrealistic ideology and who owes them the time to even give to read about this nonsense. Plenty of women out there who voted for serious change away from this nonsense.
This is better treated as a medical condition, not a mandated, whole other level of bureaucracy. People want less of this, more people working, less people looking for special privileges, treatment, and being paid for doing nothing.
Demographics is everything. While you are likely one of the good ones… there’s no denying that we are in a cultural decline. And women ARE the problem, and specifically unmarried women. They make demands and impositions on the public, and government. As a society, we don’t NEED women in the workforce. There’s not many jobs women do, that men can’t do, and do better.
The knee-jerk reaction to this is to think of the exceptions to the rule, such as yourself. But you must be somewhat aware, single women in general, the rule, as a political demograpic are out of control. And unmarried women are a destructive force. As evidenced by this ridiculous policy proposal. The answer is to redirect women to produce where they are most needed and valuable. As wives and mothers in the home. They are miserable outside of this model, and they are and will make all the rest of productive society miserable too if we continue to not be honest about where they belong.
Left unchecked, THEY WILL continue to vote for self interested policies and support programs that compete, rather than cooperate with men, that require big government and welfare funds.
We can’t back off the rhetoric and truth because of the exceptions
. That’s what this platform is for.
, and Calley and Casey Means bringing to light things like Metabolic Syndrome, chemicals in our food, especially endocrine disrupting chemicals … the list goes on.