Man up, girls! Period leave will set us back decades, says JENNI MURRAY
- My generation of feminists worked so hard to dispel myths around menstruation
- READ MORE: A riptide nearly killed me, I’ve not been in sea for the 50 years since
I’m afraid my response to the suggestion that British women should follow their contemporaries in Spain, Indonesia, South Korea, Zambia, Taiwan and Japan and be given the right to paid menstrual leave was far from sisterly.
I heard myself shouting, rather loudly: ‘For goodness’ sake, girls, just man up!’ It’s a somewhat inappropriate comment from a lifelong feminist, I know, but all biological women suffer from what is referred to as ‘the curse’.
Biological males don’t have to bleed every month to secure their reproductive capability, they don’t suffer the frequent period pain most of us have experienced and they’ve never worn white trousers with the fear of an unsightly stain spreading across their behind.
My generation, on the other hand, have all been there and, oh boy, have we had to fight all the nonsense that has characterised us as fit only for the home — where we could curl up with a hot water bottle on our tummies, dosing ourselves with painkillers and presenting no risk of embarrassment to the male colleagues who might pass out at the sight of blood.
My generation of second-wave feminists worked so hard to dispel the myths around menstruation. Some of us had PMT, but it didn’t make us any less capable at work
Germaine Greer was the one who gave me my determination to be courageous and to challenge the assumptions that dogged the ambitions of every working woman who valued her talent and intelligence but found, after any minor lapse of concentration, male colleagues whispering to mates: ‘There you go, see — on the rag.’
Germaine’s advice was to be proud of our much-derided bodily function. I never followed her challenge to ‘taste your menstrual blood’, but I ceased to be ashamed of what men would use as a weapon to undermine me. In her seminal book The Female Eunuch, Germaine told us never to hide the few days each month when we had our periods.
It is, as she said, a natural function with no shame attached. We should never hide our tampons under a sleeve or in a handbag. Display them, she said, let them be seen on the way to the loo.
The more open I became about it, the less rude and snide the guys became. They realised I was every bit as capable of doing a good job when I had my period as when I didn’t.
Generally, far better than they were on the frequent occasions when they staggered in with a roaring hangover and suffered a brain fog no bleeding woman had ever displayed.
Younger generations are doing terrible damage to the potential for women’s working lives by whingeing about their periods and their hot flushes
My generation of second-wave feminists worked so hard to dispel the myths around menstruation. Some of us had PMT, but it didn’t make us any less capable at work.
Sometimes we lost our tempers with unsympathetic male colleagues. It was rarely PMT that caused it, but perfectly justified fury at being treated as if we had a disease or serious disability.
Some of us did have agonising pain and battled through what would much later be diagnosed as endometriosis.
We fought for better medical research to help with diagnosis of serious uterine problems, but we all worked on to make things better for the next generation who would never suffer the prejudice we had endured.
Younger generations risk demolishing all the hard work done by feminists to prove that women do not suffer from a universal disability
Now I feel let down. Perhaps companies in Spain and those in this country who think employers should offer paid period leave are trying to be kind and thoughtful. They’re wrong. They’re playing into the same old stereotypes we battled against and young women seem to think they should be grateful. Call me a cynic, but to me this looks like misogyny writ large.
What company is going to think it’s a good idea to promise to pay for a short period of leave month after month? What economic sense does it make to lay out wages for work not done on a regular basis? What conversations will be going on in boardrooms when the cost of this ‘kind and thoughtful’ policy hits home?
‘God, these women, they cost us so much. They want menstruation leave. They have maternity leave. Now they’re talking about being mollycoddled through the menopause. Maybe a better financial plan would be to just let them all go home and employ men. They’re no trouble.’
Maternity leave was never an unreasonable demand, nor are requests for workplace childcare. That is not the case when it comes to menstruation or menopause.
Younger generations are doing terrible damage to the potential for women’s working lives by whingeing about their periods and their hot flushes.
I feel let down. Perhaps companies in Spain and those in this country who think employers should offer paid period leave are trying to be kind and thoughtful. They’re wrong
They risk demolishing all the hard work done by feminists to prove that women do not suffer from a universal disability.
Being a woman is different from being a man. The stages of our reproductive lives can and often do bring pain, which a good employer will recognise.
They will ensure no one takes the mickey out of a cramping stomach or hot sweat and will never have any truck with the idea that female biology is less valuable than a man’s. Genuinely equal pay should be a given.
Meanwhile, all you young and middle-aged women, please stop moaning. Menopause and menstruation are not disabilities.
Yes, I’ll say it without shame: ‘Man up and get on with the job!’
I’m full of admiration for Camilla and her jumpsuit. In the 80s I loved wearing boiler suits but, oh, the pain of stripping off for the loo. Not such a problem in my 30s. As for now? After two kids and in my early 70s, it’s a different ball game.
Jungle kids are an inspiration
They survived the plane crash that killed their mother and used the skills they’d learned in the jungle to care for themselves and each other
So often we underestimate the capabilities of children, but no longer after the survival of the four who were lost then found in the Colombian jungle last week.
They survived the plane crash that killed their mother and used the skills they’d learned in the jungle to care for themselves and each other.
Their endurance was not luck, but courage, training and supremely good management. A lesson for us all.
Well done to parliamentary hairdresser, Kelly Jo Dodge, for keeping her place on Boris’s Honours list. She deserves that MBE for work beyond the call of duty. Who’d want to be responsible for Johnson’s mop?
Slather yourself ten times a day? As if…
Not a wrinkle, not a stretch mark to be seen. And how does she do that without the assistance of a surgeon?
Liz Hurley, actress and mother of one, shows off the perfect skin of a six-year-old on her 58th birthday.
Not a wrinkle, not a stretch mark to be seen. And how does she do that without the assistance of a surgeon?
Moisturising up to ten times a day, she says. Face and hands, morning and night, seems doable — but up to ten times?
Where does she find the time?
I can’t wait for Rob’s return to Archers
I was gripped seven years ago by the story of his violence and coercive control of Helen, never missing an episode and shrieking at the radio
I can’t wait for the return of the ghastly Rob Titchener in tomorrow’s Archers. I was gripped seven years ago by the story of his violence and coercive control of Helen, never missing an episode and shrieking at the radio.
My listening slipped a bit when he left, but I’ll be back to Amb-ridge every day to see how they continue with such an important, brilliantly researched, written and acted exposition of the terror and harm of domestic violence. Be brave and strong, Helen.
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