Breathe
By Laura Manzo
How many managers know that taking into account the colic of the women who work for them will help their teams to be more productive? Very few, actually very few. In Mexico some companies already have inclusion policies with a gender perspective, to make room for women to have better careers and professional lives, but there are only a few organizations that establish those practices related to menstruation, despite the fact that in 2019 the UN recognized the neglect of the issue of menstrual management in schools and workplaces. What does business have to do with a woman being "on her day," they ask, still not daring to name a natural process.
Namely, ladies and gentlemen, this taboo has prevented not only working women from enjoying their rights to health and work, as well as to a dignified life, but also companies from enjoying the best that women have to offer: their talent and ability.
The data says the following: 48% of women take hours out of the workday to attend to menstrual discomfort. On the other hand, one out of every three has suffered some negative consequence in her work life for communicating menstrual discomfort at her workplace, and 35% of women have been docked the day or days they missed for the same reason. Meanwhile, companies that do have some kind of policy, ranging from menstrual leave to flexible schedules or home office, suffer fewer consequences on their productivity than those that do not. This is explained by the fact that women, feeling taken into account, develop a greater commitment with our employers, besides being trained in terms of time management and the tasks are distributed according to the cycle, the effects on productivity are lower. But don't think like the leaders who talk like "it's in your days". During menstruation women present, among other symptoms, a decrease in the pace of work, lack of motivation and perhaps greater difficulty in maintaining focus or exhaustion in routine tasks, but it is not an intellectual disability or lack of leadership.
