Supreme Court Right To Leave Menstrual Leave Policy To Parliament And States
· Free Press Journal
By declining to mandate a national menstrual leave policy last week, the Supreme Court has lobbed the ball right back to where it should be played: elected bodies such as Parliament and state assemblies and private organisations. It is neither the responsibility nor the business of the apex court to lay down such a policy despite the petition placed before the two-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant.
The public discourse over this issue has been split down the middle—one side, mostly public health professionals, has been advocating menstrual leave as a part of the well-being of women workers, but the other side, mostly conventional workplaces and some feminists, has argued that this puts women at a disadvantage.
Visit asg-reflektory.pl for more information.
Existing policies and implementation challenges
While the jury is out, the reality is that a few state governments like those in Odisha, Bihar, Kerala and Karnataka, besides a clutch of major corporates, have voluntarily instituted a menstrual leave policy over the past few years.
The impact of these policies, or even the implementation, including how many women claim the leave and how many times in a year, remains largely anecdotal or guesswork, given the lack of reliable data.
However, the picture that emerges is that women in formal workplaces claim the leave when they badly need it, while women in informal workplaces have been largely unaware of the privilege or are denied it. This points to some of the challenges on the ground even when a policy exists. In this context, the remarks of the Supreme Court are disquieting.
Debate over impact on women’s opportunities
The learned judges, while hearing the petition, stated that if they were to make a national policy or law mandating menstrual leave, “no one will hire women” besides making young women think they were “not on par” with their male colleagues, and this would be “harmful for their growth” or unintentionally deny them “big responsibilities”.
The first part of it holds its own—in a country with a workforce as diverse as it is in India, the classic one-size-fits-all law on menstrual leave from the SC would be ill-advised; menstrual leave policies are best prepared locally or at the state level.
However, the judges’ remarks consolidate the view that offering menstrual leave damages the opportunities and worth of working women. Lakhs of women face debilitating menstrual pain and conditions such as PCOS/PCOD and endometriosis, to name a few. They should be able to rightfully claim leave for a day or two.
The Union government moved, in 2022, the Bill for the Right of Women to Menstrual Leave and Free Access to Menstrual Products as an extension of Article 21; it proposed three days of paid menstrual leave. Clearly, the need for menstrual leave has been recognised. It need not be mandated by the apex court. Instead, it is best that all workplaces, including government offices, be persuaded to put the policy in place.