By Ananya Ray
“Women are perceived as malfunctioning and their hormones [as] out of balance, rather than seeing the organization of society and work perceived in need of a transformation to demand less constant and disciplined productivity of a certain kind.”
– Emily Martin, anthropologist.
In a country like India, where menstruation is still a taboo topic, employers, organisations and companies are yet to come to terms with the fact that menstrual awareness is of utmost importance in their workplaces. The term ‘workplace’ is usually defined as a “location where someone works for their employer or a place of employment; it can range from a home office to a large office building or factory.” The work place, usually, is a hierarchical space, replete with social stratification with a hegemony of cis-gendered heterosexual males.
The workplace can be a harsh space to navigate for gender minorities, owing to the blatant sexism, misogyny, queerphobia, and systemic hierarchies in such spaces. A percentage of these oppressed gender identities are menstruating individuals who are silenced and marginalised in the work space. Denied paid period leaves and shamed for raising this demand in the workplace, menstruators receive minimal support from their colleagues and employers. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. From dirty washrooms and lack of access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities, to the lack of availability of affordable and appropriate menstrual hygiene materials, menstruators in the workplace face several obstacles and instances of harassment within this environment.
In a conversation moderated by Radhika Santhanam for The Hindu in August, 2020, after Zomato announced a new paid menstrual leave policy for its employees (35% of whom are women), journalist Barkha Dutt and activist Kavita Krishnan discussed the implications of this policy, indicating the differences of opinion in the feminist circles regarding the issue of paid menstrual leaves in workplaces. While a section of these feminist circles is opposed to this “gendering of the workplace” as “using biology against women to offer unequal opportunities and assignments.”, another section acknowledges the fact that women and men are “biologically different” and workplaces should be more sensitive to this.
However, in order to create menstruation awareness in workplaces, one must look beyond the paid leave discourse and engage with the other issues at hand. Access to hygienic washrooms and affordable sanitary products should be considered a fundamental right for all menstruating individuals. In a survey on menstruating women by startup enthusiast Pallavi Barnwal, 67 percent of salaried women shared that their offices do not stock sanitary napkins at work premises. As little as 6.5 percent of women shared that their organisations provide paid access to sanitary napkins.
In order to combat this unequal gap, one must first accept that the definition of workplace is different for different people. From brick kilns, construction sites, farms, factories, and mills, which predominantly involve heavy manual labour, to houses with domestic help, cooks, cleaners, and washerwomen; from marketplaces and shops to office cubicles, menstruators work in a diverse range of work places. Needless to say, installing clean washrooms and sanitary product dispensers in an air-conditioned office building is much easier than providing access to similar facilities in a farm or a construction site. Moreover, menstruators working in farms, kilns or construction sites are quite economically backward, in comparison to their counterparts working in offices. This crucial element of class, therefore, must not be overlooked while addressing menstrual awareness in the ‘workplace’.
Not only should the menstrual facilities be hygienic and affordable, they must also be accessible to persons with disabilities. In order to achieve this goal, there should be awareness and sensitisation drives in workplaces. There should be strict protocols against discrimination towards menstruators and the workplace must strive to be an egalitarian, inclusive, and sensitive space where menstruators feel comfortable to work.
The subject of menstrual awareness in workplaces, therefore, goes beyond the usual topic of paid period leaves which can often be used to tokenise menstruators in order to score inclusivity brownie points by companies. The important issues that need to be raised are the questions of accessibility, affordability, hygiene, acceptance, and sensitivity. Workplaces must be period-friendly so that menstruators can work in a space where they feel comfortable, creative and appreciated.