Mr Goyal said in a note for the male employees in the blog, “Our female colleagues expressing that they are on their period leave shouldn’t be uncomfortable for us”.
A leading food delivery company Zomato recently announced 10-period leaves in a year under the Human Resource policies for its women and transgender employees. This breakthrough decision was applauded by the majority in no time.
To normalise the stigma around menstruation, Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal welcomed the move in an email to employees, “There shouldn’t be any shame or stigma attached to applying for a period leave’’. He also added, “we want to foster a culture of trust, truth and acceptance’’.
In 2017, Mumbai based media company Culture Machine’s HR policy was the first digital company to introduce the paid period leave and encouraged many companies to adopt the same. Devleena S Majumder – president of Human Resources at Culture Machine said, “First day is obviously a not-so-comfortable day for most. It’s time we face the reality. This is not an embarrassment. This is part of life.” To take the initiative to the next level, the company has also floated a petition directed at the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Ministry of Women and Child Development to make this policy applicable across India.
Not commonly known in India, Bihar state government offers a 2-days of period leave every month for ‘biological reasons’ to its women employees since 1992. There are several countries like Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Zambia and Italy also put in place a menstrual leave policy. Be it government or human resources policies, the ultimate success is to enable an environment where stigma, gender discrimination take a backseat, and employees can thrive and perform up to their maximum potential.
