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The Karnataka government’s policy decision to provide 12 days of menstrual leave for all women employees up to the age of 55 years across government offices, the IT industry, and private companies is being widely praised as a progressive step towards supporting women’s health and workplace wellbeing.
While the intent behind the policy can be appreciated, it is only one section of women who can celebrate. The question we need to ask is, what happens to all the women who don’t meet these ‘criteria’? As with many other policies, a relatively privileged group benefits, while the less privileged have to wait for the benefits to trickle down to them in some distant future.
Considering that the Karnataka Law Commission’s 62nd Report (January 2025) has already published the Karnataka Menstrual Leave and Hygiene Bill, 2025, this policy may not be far from being enacted as a law. Between the policy and the law, there is a narrow window of opportunity to raise questions about how inclusive and practical this Bill is.
Consultations by the Law Commission
Following the submission of the report by the Committee (constituted by the Labour Department) on Menstrual Leave Policy, 2024, the Law Commission conducted extensive deliberations with a cross-section of stakeholders. The report lists having had ‘threadbare’ discussions with the Karnataka State Commission for Women, members of the Committee on Menstrual Leave Policy (2024), Deputy Commissioner of the Labour Department, members of the Akhila Bharatha Janawadi Mahila Sanghatane, The Alternative Law Forum, All India Democratic Women’s Association, SIEDS, Grameena Mahila Samuha, All India Trade Union Congress, two doctors and two women advocates.
Representatives from the unorganised sector, where more than 90% of people, including women, are employed, from the Domestic Workers Union, Construction Workers Union, Agricultural Workers’ Union, Pourakarmika Unions, ASHA Workers’ Unions, women in small commercial enterprises, home-based production units, and plantations were conspicuous by their absence. Did the government not invite them?
This is a grave omission. It reinforces the age-old exclusionary practices that invisibilise women from the unorganised sector, as though their needs are less important or that decisions can be made by others on their behalf.
In Maharashtra, it was women workers harvesting sugarcane who were pushed into unwarranted hysterectomies because their menstruation was disrupting efficient labour. Hysterectomies come with complications, sometimes fatal.
Pourakarmikas, street vendors, construction workers, and domestic workers within the city, who have been demanding basics such as toilets, let alone a dignified place to change sanitary napkins, found no place at the Law Commission’s consultation table. On the one hand, the Commission invokes Article 14, which guarantees equality before the law and equal protection to all persons within India; on the other, the Bill fails to adhere to these principles.
Implementing this, as with many other policies, is easier in the formal sector, but is that enough reason to leave out all the other women who have more complex work or occupation dynamics and, precisely because of this, are more vulnerable to the violation of labour and other rights? It is time we recognise that the experiences of upper-class, savarna women cannot be universalised for others. To assume that benefits will eventually and automatically trickle down is to reinforce age-old prejudices.
Making the Bill more inclusive
The Bill needs to move beyond its urban-centric and formal sector focus.
Although students are given a 2% relaxation in attendance, the issues faced by girls in rural or remote schools need much more serious interventions to ensure their safety and dignity. The inclusion of the word ‘hygiene’ cannot be mere tokenism.
The Bill explicitly makes employers and educational institutions responsible for ensuring the availability of menstrual products, hygienic toilets, and safe disposal.
The women left out of the ambit of the Bill are those who do not have the option of working from home. Daily wage workers get paid only when they turn up for work. Those who do not turn up are constantly under threat of being replaced.
Women who are menopausal and post-menopausal face their own set of health issues, including psychological ones. The 55-year cut-off does not have a rational basis.
Further, reducing a woman’s health to menstruation and one day of leave per month fails to take into account the burden of reproductive issues, recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs), reproductive tract infections or sexually transmitted diseases (RTIs/STDs), anaemia, abortion, prolapse, and other conditions that women deal with.
While there may not be a need to problematise all stages of a woman’s life, there needs to be an understanding and recognition of these to make workplaces more women-sensitive.
The idea that menstrual leave normalises the natural functions of a woman's body is again situated within the formal urban office space and is far removed from current social realities, where prejudices against “impure” menstruating women continue.
When there is one female employee among many men, or if she is the only employee, the dynamics may again shift such that she may simply not avail herself of the leave.
The implementation of the policy by setting up a standalone menstrual leave authority to monitor employers and impose fines is nothing more than hot air. Unless the government is willing to engage with messy practicalities and foreground the vast majority of working women it has currently chosen to invisibilise, this policy will become just another elite-class victory to celebrate, as most other women-centric policies and laws continue to be.
It is time we recognised that middle-class women in Bengaluru’s urban offices are not the only working women in Karnataka.
Dr Akhila Vasan is a public health researcher with the Karnataka Janaarogya Chaluvali. Views expressed here are the author’s own.