On February 16, 2023, the Spanish government passed a law which entitles women experiencing menstrual pain to paid time off of work, provided that it was authorized by a doctor. The law was passed with 185 votes for and 154 against, with a coalition of left-wing parties supporting the measure, and the right-wing parties PP and Vox voting against it.
It amended a previous law that’s been on the books since 2010, Organic Law 2/2010, which dealt with sexual and reproductive health and the voluntary termination of pregnancies. This new amendment also makes it legal for anyone over 16 to seek an abortion, and facilitates access to abortion in public hospitals. (Even though abortion is protected by law in Spain, a whopping 85% of these procedures are performed at private facilities due to many Spanish doctors within the public health system claiming conscientious objection.)
It also makes it legal for a person to change his or her gender on his or her national identification card; in addition, it mandates the provision of free menstrual products in public schools and prisons. It also allows for an expecting mother to take prepartum leave after the 36th week of pregnancy, rather than waiting until after the baby is born, and prohibits surrogate pregnancy, calling it a form of violence against women’s bodies. A provision that would have drastically reduced the IVA tax on feminine products was ultimately cut from the final proposal.
The law will come into effect on June 1st of this year, making Spain the first European country to legally mandate menstrual leave. Spanish workers will have the right to three days of menstrual leave, with the possibility of extending it to five days. Social security will pay employees 75% of their monthly salary while they are on leave, providing the employee has been paying into social security throughout the prior six months.
This isn’t the first time that Spain has been a leader in women’s reproductive rights: in 1985, the government decriminalized abortion, and in 2010 made it legal for any woman to seek an abortion during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.
Arguments for and Against the Law
Proponents of the law say that it’s an important step towards equality in the workplace, by recognizing the specific medical needs of individuals who experience abdominal pain or discomfort, and other potentially severe symptoms such as headache, fever, nausea or dizziness during their periods. They also say it will help erase the taboo that still surrounds menstruation in society, and hopefully lead to other legal changes recognizing the needs of other gender or age groups; for example, women experiencing menopause.
According to the Spanish Gynecology and Obstetrics Society, one third of the country’s women experience debilitating pain during their periods known as dysmenorrhea. Certain medical conditions such as endometriosis can make this pain even more extreme.
Former Equality Minister Irene Montero calls the law an historic step for feminist rights, though in a press statement she also acknowledged that the application of the law would encounter resistance, “just as there has been and there will be to the application of all feminist laws.”
Some of the arguments against the Spanish law include privacy concerns—by requesting menstrual leave, a woman is necessarily forced to share intimate medical details with her employer. Opponents also complain about so-called “menstrual discrimination,” as this leave is not available to individuals who do not menstruate: men, women who are not of menstruating age, and any other individual who does not get a period. Trade unions are divided over the issue, with some in agreement with Montero, and others (such as Cristina Antoñanzas, the Vice-Secretary General of the UGT) voicing concerns that the “special treatment” will stigmatize women in the workplace, ultimately making companies less willing to hire them.
Other unions, such as the CCOO, support the bill but are concerned about the wording of the law, questioning how far women will have to go to prove that their symptoms are severe enough to warrant taking menstrual leave. Some women’s symptoms can vary greatly from month to month; others are persistently extreme. Does a female employee have to be in agony to request the time off, or does discomfort, such as cramping or fatigue, count? Does she have to have been diagnosed with a specific medical condition, or is her word that she is experiencing pain proof enough? What happens if one month she’s feeling fine, but the next she’s not?
The law doesn’t define how to measure symptoms. It only requires a doctor’s note confirming that the symptoms are severe or disabling; this means that whether or not to approve menstrual leave and how many days to recommend falls entirely on the shoulders of a woman’s GP or gynecologist, and the bill doesn’t provide much guidance for medical professionals regarding how to determine whether or not to sign off.
And while there is no waiting period after applying for leave—an employee has the right to leave on the same day that she presents her doctor’s authorization to her employer—what happens if a woman feels unwell but is unable to get an appointment with her doctor on that same day? The Spanish public health system isn’t known for its speed in handing out appointments, and even private health care providers often don’t have same-day appointments available.
Some Spanish companies, such as Glovo, publicly applaud and embrace the new legislation and say they encourage the de-stigmatization of women’s reproductive health in the workplace. The person in charge of the department that oversees the company’s inclusion and diversity, Lotus Smits, says: “We need to normalize the menstrual cycle because it is normal.”
Other companies don’t feel prepared or flexible enough to handle the potentially heavier workload if many or all of their female employees choose to take leave for several days per month. In addition, companies would have to go through the process of instituting certain privacy protections in order to make sure they conform to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and they would have to train their human resources and accounting staff to make sure they understand how to properly log, process and pay for these leave days.
Not to say that this law is perfect (it isn’t), or that the author of this article has experience in policy making (she doesn’t), but she would like to pose a hypothetical question to the reader: If all male employees of reproductive age experienced a form of heavy bleeding for approximately five days out of every 28, would the need for a law to offer relief be the subject of national or international debate? Or would we consider it to be a necessary protection for employees’ overall mental and physical well-being?
Menstrual Leave Laws Around the World
A comprehensive study of the topic traced the origin of menstrual leave laws back to the Soviet Union in 1922, which provided women working in factories with two to three days’ menstrual leave. According to Elizabeth Hill and the other co-authors of the study, the policy was aimed at protecting women’s fertility and their ability to bear healthy children, which was also a way of protecting the Soviet state. The researchers were unable to discover whether the law was successful, or whether or not the law was still in existence when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. The current Russian government was considering implementing a similar law in 2013, but the wording of the law referring to women’s bodies and psyches as “unwieldy,” caused even the country’s most progressive politicians to object.
The only other countries that currently offer the option of menstrual leave to employees are Japan (1947), Indonesia (1948), Vietnam (2001), South Korea (2001), Taiwan (2002) and Zambia (2017).
Japan introduced their law in 1947 as a part the Labor Standards Act; it was an attempt to give women more equal rights in industrial environments, which usually didn’t have gender-specific bathrooms. The same law is still in place today. Women may to request time off by the hour or by the day, and don’t have to provide any supporting medical documentation. The time off is granted at the employer’s discretion. However, Japanese studies have shown that nearly 9 in 10 female employees don’t take advantage of the protections offered by the law in fear of discrimination or reprisals at work.
Indonesia enacted a similar law for similar reasons in 1948, but the data show that while the law may have been beneficial for factory and other blue-collar workers, women in white-collar jobs or in the service sector often reported feeling too embarrassed to ask for menstrual leave. The Association of Indonesian Businesswomen lobbied to repeal the law in the 1990s, saying that it hurt, rather than helped, women’s emancipation; in 2003, the law was reformed to allow negotiation between employers and unions regarding the way to handle sick days specifically due to menstrual symptoms, rather than mandating two days’ automatic leave.
Since 2001, women in Vietman have been entitled to a 30-minute, paid break each day during their menstrual cycle and three days a month of paid menstrual leave. In 2021, the law was updated to grant bonus pay to female workers who do not take menstrual leave.
In 2001, South Korea updated its Labor Standards Act to include one paid day off per month for each female employee, regardless of her level of seniority within their company. Any employer found to have denied his or her employees this leave when requested can face heavy fines and up to two years in jail. However, women are often hesitant to ask for the day off due to the societal backlash they face; many men call the law “reverse sexism,” or claim that some women use the law to game the system and get time off “just for being a woman.”
Menstrual leave was first put into law in Taiwan in 2002. Women were allowed three days’ leave per year (not per month), and were compensated half of their salary for those three days, just as any worker would be for a regular sick day. However, these three sick days were deducted from the 30 annual sick days that each employee was guaranteed, effectively reducing their number of “normal” sick days to 27. The law was amended in 2013, so that women now have access to 30 sick days just like their male colleagues, with an additional three optional days to accommodate menstrual leave.
The African country of Zambia passed a menstrual leave law in 2015. Women are allowed to call in sick one day per month—which is euphemistically called “Mother’s Day,” whether the woman has children or not—without having to give any additional explanations to their employer. However, the implementation of the law is irregular, and not all companies offer this option to their female employees.
Italy proposed a menstrual leave law in 2016, but the legislation stalled and was abandoned when the parliamentary term ended in 2018. The Mexican government recently put a similar amendment to their Federal Labor Law into motion; it is currently pending approval by the Mexican Federal Congress.