India’s top court has rejected a petition seeking menstrual leave for working women and female students with the judges saying if they were to make such a law, “no-one will hire women”.
The two-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant said mandatory leave would make young women think they were “not at par” with their male colleagues and would be “harmful for their growth”.
The subject of menstrual leave has long polarised Indian society - while many agree with the justices’ views, others argue that a day or two off can help women deal with painful periods.
Some states and a number of large private companies have introduced menstrual leaves for employees over the years.
The top court’s comments came while hearing a petition filed by lawyer Shailendra Mani Tripathi, seeking a national menstrual leave policy, legal website LiveLaw reported.
Tripathi later told news agency IANS that he had hoped that working women would receive “two-to-three days of leave” to account for menstrual difficulties.
The judges, however, said that introducing such a policy would not benefit women - instead, it would harm them by reinforcing gender stereotypes and affecting their employability.
I support giving everyone extra days off ‘just because’, actually, but that’s beside the point. The problem as stated in the article was that employers perceive disproportionate days off as a reason to not hire women; the obvious solution is to just remove that from the equation. I wasn’t aware that giving men days off somehow harms women, but apparently I just don’t understand.
Meanwhile it is not actually an argument without merit that employers would prefer employees not to be absent with no recourse ≈10-15% of the month compared to others.
Is fairness what you’re aiming for here?
No, I’m aiming to remove the objection. This seems like the easiest way to accomplish that.