Menstruation Leave?
Parallel Universe alerts us to a proposed Senate Bill that would affect working [as in outside the home only] Filipino women:
Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago Wednesday proposed a bill that would allow women workers to take a one-day leave during their monthly menstruation period.
Proposed Senate Bill 1687 or the Menstrual Leave Act provides that women workers can avail of 50 percent of the day's pay during their period.
Interestingly, women in South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, and Taiwan already enjoy this "benefit".
The rationale for the Bill is that women should be allowed to rest during their menstrual period, when most women experience abdominal cramps, among other menstrual symptoms. In other words, women should be sent home to suffer in the privacy of their own rooms.
This doesn't make a lot of sense. There's no reason why menstruating women should be in pain; many treatments are available. And even if, for whatever reason, a woman doesn't avail herself of the treatments, she should be able to take sick days off because she doesn't feel well, not because she's menstruating. Pain is pain, and so is nausea, vomiting, a migraine, etc.
Why do women have to put up with monthly period-related problems, and why do they have to justify the etiology of their medical problems?
(via Medlogs)
posted by ema @ 8:27 PM
2 comments
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2 Comments:
Is this post a joke? I don't understand any type reasoning as to why women need to take days off of work because they are having their period! I'm 52 years old, have worked for 34 years and don't ever recall specifically missing work because I was having my period. Does that mean I always only had really light non-symptomatic periods? Hardly! I remember in my 20s and 30s having to take indocin (sp) for menstrual pains. But, I took one and then took myself to work.
Later, after having invasive cancer surgery and going through surgical menopause it was pretty much the same thing. Menopause produces some wild symptoms, and I was using a climara patch. I remember feeling terrible sometimes through all of that, my husband would remind me to slap my patch on my ass and go to work.
Monthly periods are a part of our normal make up, They are not an illness.
Thanks for the reference post and the comments.
I think the good senator has to be illuminated on the difference between menstruation and pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS). PMS is the illness that needs treatment and yes, in this case, maybe a proposed vacation leave from work. Menstruation, as you and I pointed out (in my post), is part of the female biologic structure. It is not an illness.
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