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It seems that the latest "thing" in some employment law/HR circles is to talk about periods. Yes, menstruation. The curse. The time of the month. 'Shark week.' Something that all women will be familiar with for most of their adult life.
Quite why this "thing" is under discussion is beyond me. I guess it is a follow-on from the meno-hysteria we have also been experiencing. It appears that poor women either spend their working lives up to their knees in blood or they have to deal with what happens when that is starting to end. Clearly there are people out there who think we need help. I have news for you people: we don't.
I'm 58. I know. I am post-menopause. Hurray for having no periods. They are a bore. Yes, they can be painful and for some extremely so. I know women who had to take to their beds once a month due to extreme pain. I've been through perimenopause and menopause. I don't make lightly of it but guess what? I survived and I worked throughout. I never took one day off in my working life for either periods or menopause. You could say I am lucky for that – I am sure I am – but most women will also be able to cope perfectly well without any interference from their boss or their manager, and I find it frankly patronising to suggest that we need to talk about it at work. Shall we put another target on women's backs like we do when they are pregnant or on maternity leave?
Do you hear employers being encouraged to support men in their mid-life crises? Are employers going to have Viagra vending machines on site in case erectile dysfunction is impacting the guys? Hair tonics to assist with the receding hairline? Trips to Turkey for hair transplants? No, they're not but there seems to be a perception that working women need help. We do not.
I cannot be the only professional woman who finds this incredibly dreary. Women are under the spotlight when they want to have kids, branded as weird if they don't want to, punished if they want to take mat leave, viewed as being anti-career when they get back from mat leave, the list goes on and one. Are we to track the entire career of women by reference to their biological function? Please, no.
Dignity at work for all covers it all. If a woman is having a particularly rough time of things for any reason, she is entitled to ask for help if she wants it.If she wants it. But pushing out reading materials and putting up posters about menstrual health and menopause is just nothing short of infuriating to me, as is suggesting that menopause is a disability. These are bodily functions not health conditions.
In legal terms the symptoms arising from menopause are capable of amounting to a disability for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 and some women may indeed need to call upon those provisions but being a woman and going through menopause itself is not a disability. It is not. Most of us are getting along just fine thank you very much, doing our jobs well and would thank you not to go probing about what is going on with our bodies. Men do not get the same treatment. I guess they are stronger so they don't need help? Once again, women being treated as the weaker sex.
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