A little over a month after the vote, in Spain, of a law establishing menstrual leave for women suffering from painful periods, the city of Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis) is in turn adopting a similar device. . As of Monday, March 27, all municipal workers – approximately 1,200 women – will have the possibility of taking two days off per month, on medical justification, for this reason, without deduction of salary. This is a first for a local authority.
For the mayor (Socialist Party), Karim Bouamrane, behind this decision announced symbolically on March 8, International Women’s Rights Day, it is both“a question of quality of life at work” and an issue concerning “women’s health”. Recalling that one in ten women of childbearing age suffers from endometriosis and that one in two women say they suffer from painful periods, “How can we accept that nothing is being done to improve their professional daily life? »questions the elected official, who says he is made aware of this problem by feminist activists.
In principle, however, there is no consensus on the subject; some feminist associations fear in particular that such a leave will lead to discrimination in hiring for women. For Ophélie Latil, co-founder of the Georgette Sand collective, “Menstrual leave is a false good idea. It’s a measure that obscures the need for an overall vision of women’s health at work, a much larger project.. The feminist activist also criticizes the choice to send women who are suffering home, which “not only isolates them, but makes their pain invisible”.
In Saint-Ouen, in concrete terms, city officials will therefore have the choice, once a month, of teleworking or of taking up to two days of “special authorization of absence”, without a waiting day. “Once they have gone through occupational medicine, they will have no further steps to take”explains Mr. Bouamrane, who is pleased that this decision, which will be the subject of information to the municipal council on April 17, is supported by “all the elect”.
Elected officials working on a bill
The announcement has been emulated. In a letter sent on March 22 to Mathieu Hanotin, the president of Plaine-Commune, around thirty elected representatives from the left ask for the extension of this system so that it benefits all the agents of the nine municipalities of Seine-Saint -Denis (including Saint-Ouen) which make up this intermunicipal grouping.
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