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e-ORGANISATIONS & PEOPLE, WINTER 2018, VOL. 25, NO. 4 PAGE i WWW.AMED.ORG.UK
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e-ORGANISATIONS & PEOPLE, WINTER 2018, VOL. 25, NO. 4 PAGE 23 WWW.AMED.ORG.UK
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Menstruation and humanistic
management at work:
the development and implementation
of a menstrual workplace policy
Lara Owen
The policy was co-designed by management and staff, and uses flexible working arrangements and
contingency planning to allow women greater support when menstruating. I discuss the effects of the policy
and suggest avenues for future research.
Keywords
menstruation; menstrual leave; period policy; flexible working; contingency planning; Coexist
Introduction
This paper explores menstruation in the workplace in the context of a humanistic management approach
which highlights the values of respect, dignity and wellbeing at work. In recent years there has been an
increased level of interest in menstruation as a marginalised yet important aspect of women’s lives.
Research has shown the detrimental effects of menstrual stigma on women’s physical and mental health
(e.g. O’Flynn, 2006; Johnston-Robledo & Chrisler, 2013b) and the impact of menstrual prejudice on attitudes
to women in the workplace (Roberts, 2002). Social media conversations, media articles, the new ‘menstrual
activism’ (Bobel, 2010) and calls for ‘menstrual equity’ (Weiss-Wolf, 2017) point to a shift in consideration for
women’s menstrual wellbeing. Correspondingly, as a management and organisation studies scholar with a
special interest in women’s rights and wellbeing at work, I undertook an ethnographically-informed research
study on the development and implementation of a ‘period policy’ at Coexist, a social enterprise in Bristol,
UK, between October 2016 and December 2017. This paper describes the process of developing a new kind
of humanistic management policy from scratch.
This article explores menstruation in the workplace in the context of a
humanistic management approach which highlights the values of
respect, dignity, and wellbeing at work. Increased public conversation
on menstruation in recent years, supported by research showing the
detrimental effects of menstrual stigma on women’s physical and mental
health, point to a shift in consideration for women’s menstrual wellbeing.
This paper is based on my research on the development and
implementation of a ‘period policy’ at Coexist, a social enterprise in
Bristol, UK, which I undertook between October 2016 and December
2017.
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Background
In March 2016, Coexist, a social enterprise running a large community building and associated initiatives in
Bristol, announced it was bringing in a ‘Period Policy’ for its menstruating employees. This public
announcement was met with a remarkable amount of media attention, and for a while the organisation was
overwhelmed with requests for print interviews and media appearances. The story went viral and attracted
international interest. I was living in Australia at the time, and was contacted by a national newspaper for my
perspective on what this meant for Australian organisations. I have a long-term interest in menstruation, and
particularly in menstruation at work, so I followed these developments closely. I was also about to start a
PhD in a Department of Management, and wondered if this policy might be a suitable subject for my
research. As I was on the other side of the world, I wasn’t sure this would be the best way forward for
Coexist or for me, so I watched and waited to see how matters developed, but everything seemed to go
quiet. So I contacted a colleague who put me in touch with Rebecca (Bex) Baxter, the Coexist People
Development Director and initiator of the policy idea. I was going to the UK the following week to visit my
family, and Bex and I arranged to meet at a café on the Gloucester Road in Bristol.
Bex Baxter with staff in the Coexist offices, March 2016. Taken from the Daily Mail 2/3/2016
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3471011/Company-reveals-plans-offer-period-leave-women-month-create-happier-
work-environment.html
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Why the need? An ethic of care
By this time, three months after the public launch of the idea, the media attention had begun to die down, and
the organisation was faced with the nitty-gritty task of actually writing the policy. A lot of words had been
spoken and there was a great deal of goodwill and excitement, but deciding how to actually go about it was
daunting. Bex told me that since the public consultation and media frenzy she had felt rather stuck, and just
did not know where to begin. So we started to talk. She said that as a basic premise, her organisation
wanted to challenge the norm of women feeling like they had to work when they were in menstrual pain; that
the initiating moment of the policy had occurred when she saw a staff member white in the face and bent
double with period pain while working on the information desk in the front lobby, and who said (with the
learned stoicism of menstruating women everywhere), “Oh, I’m fine, it’s just my period”.
There was widespread recognition within Coexist that expecting women to ‘grin and bear it’ as per cultural
norms, and thus to work while in pain or having other menstrual symptoms, went against the organisation’s
primary ethic of care. For example, as with pretty much every workplace, along with those women who
experienced ‘normal’ menstrual pain, at Coexist there were women with endometriosis (an estimated 10% of
the menstruating population have this condition) which made menstruation extremely painful, and profoundly
affected their experience of the workplace and at times, of their ability to work an eight (or more) hour day on
every working day of the month (Seear, 2009). In addition, the progressive ethos of the organisation,
committed to humanistic and broader ecological values, meant that there was a desire to encourage and
support women to honour the menstrual cycle rather than to feel they had to suppress, deny, or minimise it.
Issues in enacting a menstrual policy
But how should the organisation enact this period policy? Should they have mandatory menstrual leave? Or
one or two days paid leave a month for every woman if she wanted it? How would that sit with non-
menstruating employees? How would it impact the smooth-running of the organisation? It sounded like such
a great idea, to factor women’s cyclicity into the structure of working life, to legitimise women’s right to
wellbeing at work, and to respect the fertile female body and its needs – but what would that look like in the
contemporary world? Bex and her colleagues were well aware that they were engaging with this possibility in
a wider context long predicated on the male body as the norm in the workplace (Acker, 1990; Tretheway,
1999), and still infected by longstanding menstrual stigma (Johnston-Robledo & Chrisler, 2013a & 2013b;
Roberts, 2002; Young, 2005).
I had previously done research into menstrual leave internationally, which indicated that blanket leave (such
as every menstruating woman getting two days off when bleeding, paid or unpaid depending on the
situation), was only workable in specific situations where there was a cultural history of resting on the first two
days of menses, (such as in parts of Asia), and where women were not competing with men for jobs. In
practice this meant menstrual leave was a culturally related, traditional ‘bonus’ for women in very low-paid
jobs with no career path. In Taiwan, the Gender Equal Employment Act (2002) gave women the right to
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apply for menstrual leave, yet this benefit has not been taken up because of the inconvenience of having to
get medical certificates, and because women fear losing status and jobs and being seen as less useful than
men (Chang et al, 2011).
In developed countries, whenever the subject of menstrual leave has thus far arisen in the media, it has
attracted a furore of contesting responses, exposing women to sexist and demeaning commentary (Sayers &
Jones, 2015). Bex had recently experienced this phenomenon as the organisation’s primary spokesperson
for the policy, so she was well aware of the complexity of doing something apparently helpful for women at
work, and how it could backfire. I knew of a few small businesses and non-profits in the Global North which
acknowledged that menstruating women might need to adjust their work patterns to their cycles, but these
menstrual ‘policies’ were mostly unwritten agreements that women could go home or take a bit of time off if
they needed to, rather than anything formalised. Bex and her Board felt it was important to formalise the
policy to legitimise and think through women’s needs at work, and perhaps also to act as a model and
inspiration for other organisations to do the same.
Making a start
In this first conversation, I offered to give my help pro bono, aware that this would simplify matters ethically if I
went on to do research on the initiative. (I discussed my potential research with Bex at the time as a future
possibility, pending my supervisors’ acceptance of my research plans and approval from my institution’s
ethics committee.) In my consultant role, I suggested letting go of the term ‘menstrual leave’ as it was so
contentious, and instead considering ‘menstrual flexibility’. With this reframe of the concept, we worked
through several iterations of the policy, and after several months settled on the most conservative version as
a starting place. This allowed women paid time off when menstruating, in consultation with their line
management, but this was time that would be ‘paid back’ at other times of the month. We knew this was
potentially problematic, but that at least it was a start and a place from which to elicit feedback. It is much
harder to get busy people to contribute to a blank slate than to something already partly formed, and we were
aware that, given the potential difficulties and the lack of previous successful models, it was most likely we
would end up with a policy that worked if the people using the policy were able to shape it. So we were not
worried about putting something out there that was probably going to need a lot more change. From the
start, I had recommended and modelled a process-oriented view of the policy, seeing it as something
malleable and in flux at this stage. Bex was in agreement. This was also her personal philosophy, and with
a shared perspective we worked together in considerable harmony. If this was to be a useful policy, with
patient attention it would settle into something that worked, at which point I hoped it would become part of the
background furniture of the organisation’s life rather than a flashy thing to get excited about. If that could
happen, then acknowledgment of women’s needs surrounding menstruating at work would be on the way to
being normalised, which I felt would be a positive development.
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Reconciling my consultancy and research roles
Three months after I began consulting on the policy, I started formal research on it for my PhD, now with
university ethics and supervisory approval. The existing role I had as a pro bono consultant thus became
entangled with doing qualitative research into the development and implementation of the policy. Having
foreseen this situation, from the start I had dealt with the potential tensions in this dual role by adopting a
participant observer position informed by a feminist ethnographic ethos, which included factoring self-
awareness into my analysis, understanding process, and reciprocating knowledge (Skeggs, 2001). As much
as I could, I asked questions rather than leaping in to give solutions. I focused on attentive listening, waiting,
eliciting, and then offering advice or suggestions when requested. When I was asked direct questions based
on my knowledge of the field, I did not adopt either an authoritative role or deny my expertise by hiding
behind a need for researcher ‘objectivity’. Instead I used a friendship style in which I collaborated on
solutions.
The evolution of the policy
It took six months to develop the pilot policy through an iterative process, during which time there were Skype
calls and emails back and forth between Bex, myself and the new staff member taking over Bex’s operational
role, and occasional consultations with other staff. I took as light an approach as I could, primarily acting as a
sounding board and not as an initiator. When they felt it was ready, the policy was presented to the Board,
where it was ratified and implemented as formal organisational policy, with the recognition that this was a
preliminary version open to feedback. It then took another six months for everyone to see how it operated in
practice, and to turn the policy into something that worked. While by some standards this rate of progress
was slow, once staff had a policy to work from, experimentation elicited clarity. We all met up again in person
six months after the initial written policy had been ratified, at which point staff came back with their varying
experiences and ideas about what they needed.
First, it became clear that the notion of everyone paying back time was too complicated and burdensome for
people who already felt overly busy, with many staff members combining multiple life roles as workers,
parents and partners, and often also volunteers and activists. As we reworked the policy based on this
feedback, flexible working involving paying back time was taken out as a requisite for using the policy.
However staff asked for and were given the option to work more hours at other times if they wanted to, in the
acknowledgement that at times this might be a preference for some women.
Second, there was the issue of how much time people might need to take off from work. This varied from
person to person, but it was agreed that the majority of women wanted the option of taking a day off and
being paid for it. So the policy developed to allow all menstruating women one paid day off if needed; if they
required more than one day off related to menstruation, this time would come out of their sick leave.
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Third, women in some positions felt they really needed time away from the workplace, whereas for others it
was less important. It became clear that the burden of working while menstruating was most keenly felt by
women in front-facing roles who needed to be ever-present and ever-engaged. Some employees expressed
a desire to rest and retreat when menstruating, especially if bleeding heavily. In front-facing roles, this inward
pull conflicted with the emotional labour involved in being helpful to the public all day long. On the other
hand, women in less extroverted roles, (such as in the back office), felt less need to take time out, also in the
knowledge that they could often adjust their workload to their energy level without upsetting workplace needs
and expectations. Working from home was included in the policy as an option to be discussed with line
management.
Contingency planning
Importantly, it became apparent from the six-month feedback that women were much less likely to use the
policy unless there was someone to temporarily take over their role. Accordingly, contingency planning was
introduced for front-facing staff, with a list of people who could take over when needed, either by previous
planning, a phone call the night before, or during the working day. If anyone felt physically uncomfortable at
work, but not as if they needed to go home for the rest of the day, they could also make use of the
contingency plan for an hour or two, and go and lie down in a wellbeing room.
The current policy
The policy that developed through this process appears to have enough flexibility to be effective for most
employees. There remains one area of the workplace where two women work and where it has so far been
impossible to provide a solution, due to the specificity and demands of the jobs involved and difficulties
providing contingency support in their specialised area of work. However, these women have expressed that
they find benefit in being able to be open about the situation, even when it is not yet ideal. Additional
supportive elements of the policy include induction materials, regular check-ins, and support for management
in listening to the needs of menstruating staff and destigmatising menstruation at work. The policy stresses
good communication as key to the smooth working of the initiative, along with planning and awareness of the
cycle. Women in front-facing roles share information about their cycles with each other through a menstrual
app, to aid in planning.
The wider effect of the policy on the organisation
In terms of the wider organisation, men expressed no resentment, and instead said they liked the fact that
menstruation was addressed openly, and felt it gave them permission to also adjust their working day to their
bodies when needed. The notion of ‘permission’ came up repeatedly, and extended to a radical change in
the customary opening roundtable of organisational meetings, at which women began to volunteer their
cyclical status as a factor in their current state of mind and bodily wellbeing. Rather than being essentialist,
or shaming in any way, and/or reifying the menstruating body in some compensatory fashion, this
development appeared to simply normalise a previously stigmatised part of embodiment, which has profound
implications for women’s sense of embodied ‘rightness’ in the workplace. Over time, men also spoke more in
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such public settings about how they were feeling. I have sat in and participated in many organisational
meetings in my working life, but rarely in ones which felt as relaxed, friendly, accepting and free, even when
people were in disagreement about other matters.
The positive influence of progressive organisational values
It is no accident that this early example of a formal menstrual policy was instigated at an organisation based
on progressive values. Coexist articulates its commitment to a trust policy tied into a commitment to
wellbeing: no one is tracking hours or demanding people work no matter what. The staff are passionate
about wellbeing and social justice, and work for relatively low pay. Thus, the possibility of staff exploiting the
policy was minimised by the organisational culture and the people attracted to it. In addition, a majority of the
staff are menstruating-age women. So there were specific elements that allowed the policy to be developed
and implemented without discord.
Photograph taken by Lara Owen 20/6/2017 of the front desk area at Hamilton House, the community hub in Stokes Croft, Bristol
that Coexist has run since 2008.
Conclusion
Social trends indicate that menstruation is in the process of losing its historic stigmatised status, and that
menstrual equity and cyclical awareness are significant growing matters of attention (Weiss-Wolf, 2017). So
we can expect to see continued interest in menstrual workplace policies of various kinds. (There is also
growing interest in implementation of best practice recommendations for menopause at work.) The
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experience at Coexist indicates that organisations need to listen to women employees when creating a
menstrual policy, otherwise accommodations to menstruation at work could become lip service PR strategies.
Clearly there is no point introducing such policies just to look good: they have to be practicable within the
organisational context, and serve the real needs of menstruating workers. We learned that simply offering
say, a day off a month, without contingency planning and acknowledgment of different needs in different
roles, will not result in a policy that works for all roles or that women will feel they can take up without causing
disruption, potentially endangering their jobs and promotion prospects in the long-term.
Future research on this topic is needed in a variety of organisations, and also longitudinally to find out how
such policies are perceived to influence menstruating workers and organisational cultures over time and in
specific circumstances. For example, research has shown that women with endometriosis tend to have
shorter or interrupted careers, falling into unemployment or ‘choosing’ to be self-employed, whether or not
they have the temperament and support necessary for entrepreneurship (e.g. Gilmour, 2008). While we
might reasonably surmise that sympathetic policies could keep women with endometriosis in the jobs for
which they have trained, are suited, and where they may have significant value to the organisation, we need
research to confirm and understand the extent of this employment trend.
The pioneering policy at Coexist is an early example of a humane initiative to recognise and accommodate to
the varying needs of menstruating women, and to relieve the unnecessary suffering endured by some women
working within traditional organisational norms. The policy offers some new possibilities for reimagining
workplace conventions surrounding women’s biology. It will be interesting to see if and how these findings
can be translated into organisations with different kinds of workplace cultures.
As for myself, it was an enormous privilege to be able to study a new kind of policy so close up, and I learned
a great deal. Terminology is still a work-in-progress, with ‘menstrual leave’ clearly an inflammatory and
insufficient term. At the moment I am using phrases like: ‘best practice menstrual workplace policies’,
‘menstrual cycle recognition at work’ or ‘menstrual accommodation in the workplace.’ So far the media (and
my inbox) indicates there is growing interest in companies exploring supportive measures for menstruating
and menopausal employees, certainly in the UK and Australia. In today’s rapid global communication
landscape, and considering the increased focus on menstrual and menopausal health and wellbeing more
broadly, we can anticipate an openness to these topics in workplaces internationally.
In terms of humanistic management, the development of Coexist’s ‘period policy’ offers several takeaways.
First, that it is vital to involve the eventual users of a new and ground-breaking policy in its creation, to ensure
successful uptake. Second, that humanistic policies can have (unanticipated) knock-on benefits to other
workers. Third, that the workplace can be the locus for reconceptualising historically stigmatised matters
whose marginalisation causes unnecessary suffering. In such ways we can integrate the values of respect,
dignity and wellbeing into the lived experience of everyday working environments, and have a positive
influence on the broader culture.
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References
Acker, Joan, (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender and Society, 4(2),
139-158.
Bobel, Chris, (2010). New Blood: Third-wave feminism and the politics of menstruation. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press.
Chang, Chueh, Chen, Fen-Ling, Chang, Chu-Hui & Hsu, Ching-Hui, (2011). A preliminary study on menstrual
health and menstrual leave in the workplace in Taiwan. Taiwan Gong Wei Sheng Za Zhi. 30(5), 436-450.
Gilmour, J.A., Huntington, A, & Wilson, H.V., (2008). The impact of endometriosis on work and social
participation. International Journal of Nursing Practice, 14, 443–448.
Johnston-Robledo, Ingrid & Chrisler, Joan, (2013a). Positioning periods: Menstruation in social context: An
introduction to a special issue. Sex Roles, 68(1-2), 1-8.
Johnston-Robledo, Ingrid & Chrisler, Joan, (2013b). The menstrual mark: Menstruation as social stigma. Sex
Roles, 68(1-2), 9-18.
O’Flynn, Norma, (2006). Menstrual symptoms: The importance of social factors in women’s experiences.
British Journal of General Practice, 56, 950-957.
Roberts, Tomi-Ann, Goldenberg, J. L., Power, C., & Pyszczynski, T., (2002). ”Feminine protection”: The
effects of menstruation on attitudes towards women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26, 131-139.
Sayers, Janet Grace, & Jones, Deborah, (2015). Truth scribbled in blood: women’s work, menstruation and
poetry. Gender, Work and Organization, 22(2), 94-111.
Seear, Kate, (2009). The third shift: Health, work and expertise among women with endometriosis. Health
Sociology Review, 18, 194-206.
Skeggs, Beverley, (2001). Feminist ethnography. In P. Atkinson, A. Coffey, S. Delamont, J. Loftland, & L.
Loftland (Eds.), Handbook of ethnography (426-442). London, UK: SAGE Publications.
Trethewey, Angela, (1999). Disciplined bodies: Women’s embodied identities at work. Organization Studies,
20(3), 423-450.
Weiss-Wolf, Jennifer (2017). Periods gone public: Taking a stand for menstrual equity. New York: Arcade.
Young, Iris Marion, (2005). Menstrual meditations. In Young, I. M., On female body experience: "throwing like
a girl" and other essays, (97-122). New York: Oxford University Press.
Further resources
Bex Baxter’s TED talk on the Coexist menstrual policy: Ending a Workplace Taboo. Period.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wWUAx_1JDw
Coexist’s page on the period policy: https://www.hamiltonhouse.org/coexist-pioneering-period-policy/
Recent examples of articles on menstrual leave in the media:
(1) http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170908-can-period-leave-ever-work
(2) https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/03/health/period-leave-australia-explainer-intl/index.html
About Lara
Lara Owen works internationally as a consultant on women’s wellbeing at work, with a specialisation in
menstruation and menopause. She is in the final year of her PhD on menstruation at work at Monash
University in Melbourne. For more information and to get in touch, please visit her website,
http://laraowen.com. She welcomes correspondence on this topic to: lara@laraowen.com.
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About the Humanistic Management
Network and AMED
The Humanistic Management Network (HMN) is an international group of practitioners and academics who
share a concern that organisations exist to benefit society. Humanistic management is based on three
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on-going dialogue with multiple stakeholders. Humanistic management (HM) can be a driver for sustained
business success and can reduce the cost of conflict, high levels ofContents stress-related absence, and the
costs of raising capital. But HM principles are not shared by everyone and are increasingly under threat. As
the newly-established Humanistic Management Network UK Chapter, we are very open to your suggestions
and ideas about how we can develop and grow.
Contact - Christina Schwabenland: christina.schwabenland@beds.ac.uk
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