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Mapping Menstrual Leave in 2024: One Year Since Spain’s Implementation

One year ago, Days for Girls published a blog piece on the pros and cons of menstrual leave policies in response to Spanish legislation that federally protected menstrual leave. Menstrual leave allows a person to take paid or unpaid leave from their employment when they are menstruating and are unable to go to work.

Now over a year since Spain’s groundbreaking move as the first European country to implement a national menstrual leave policy, The Guardian reported that menstrual leave had only been taken 1,559 times from June 1st, 2023 through April 2024, according to data from Spain’s ministry of inclusion, social security and migration. The newspaper reported that an average of 4.75 employees are using the leave each day, in a workforce of over 21 million employees.

How does this data in the first year of the policy mitigate or affirm the concerns about menstrual leave addressed in our article last year?

The policy is not being abused.
While some critics of menstrual leave warned about all menstruating employees taking the leave every month, it is clear that has not been the case. The Ministry indicated in The Guardian’s article that “there has not been an avalanche of this type of temporary incapacity and its use has stabilised month by month since its implementation.” With the limited data available from other countries, infrequent usage is the norm for menstrual leave policies – but notably, Spain’s paid policy follows this trend that has thus far only been analyzed in countries with unpaid protected menstrual leave. So, despite the concerns surrounding policy abuse and the efforts of the Spanish government to fund the program, why has the uptake been so low?

The policy may be inaccessible.
As we noted in our previous article, the Spanish menstrual leave policy requires a doctor’s note for employees to access the policy. In the final version of the bill that was passed, only employees with a diagnosed menstrual condition can take menstrual leave. Given the costly and time-consuming challenges that people with periods face in obtaining diagnoses for menstrual conditions, it may be expected that a policy with this limitation would be underutilized, even by those who do experience painful periods.

The policy has not led to discrimination – but is it a self-fulfilling prophecy?
It is clear that the policy has not been abused in terms of the volume of leave requests, particularly extraneous ones. However, it is unknown if the reluctance of employees to take menstrual leave could be affected by a fear of discrimination or retaliation against menstruating employees, even though the low uptake has not yet led to any evidence that menstrual discrimination has taken place as a result of menstrual leave policies.

To access the leave, employees must share personal medical information with their employer – a questionable privacy risk and creating a potentially embarrassing, uncomfortable, or even unsafe situation for the menstruating employee. Larger questions loom about discrimination against women in the workplace due to the possible interpretation of menstrual leave policies as meaning that employees cannot work during menstruation. Whether the concerns about discrimination have materialized meaningfully or not, the threat of such discrimination and the potential step backward for women in the workplace could be enough to deter qualified employees from taking the leave that they are entitled to.

The challenges a Spanish employee faces to access menstrual leave are comparable to what we have seen in several other countries with menstrual leave policies. While new menstrual leave policies will surely be introduced as more data becomes available on outcomes in Spain, Days for Girls has created an infographic surveying the landscape of global menstrual leave policies in 2024. Read and download the infographic HERE.

Days for Girls
Days for Girls is an award-winning global NGO bringing menstrual health, dignity and opportunity to 3+ million girls (and counting!) worldwide.