This just in: Spain will be approving a three-day menstrual leave soon, as part of a reform package. The Spanish government is set to approve the package at its cabinet meeting on the 17th, according to Telegraph.
The new measure is intended for workers who suffer from severe period pain which can be debilitating. Complex writes: “The Spanish Gynaecology and Obstetrics Society states about one-third of those who menstruate experience dysmenorrhea—extreme cramping that occurs before or during a period. Dysmenorrhea symptoms range from headaches and diarrhea to a fever and stomach pain.”
“If someone has an illness with such symptoms a temporary disability is granted, so the same should happen with menstruation—allowing a woman with a very painful period to stay at home,” Spain’s Secretary of State Equality and Gender Violence Angela Rodriguez said to the Spanish newspaper El Periodico according to Telegraph.
It is crucially not the first country to enact this measure, just the first one in the Western World. It’ll be following in the footsteps of Zambia and Asian countries like South Korean, Japan, and Indonesia.
Aside from the menstrual leave, the reform package will also remove VAT from the sale prices of sanitary pads and tampons, require schools to offer menstrual products to its students, and provide these menstrual products to those in “marginalized social circumstances” for free. This will make these products more accessible to all.
Spanish government is set to “remove the requirement for 16- and 17-year-olds seeking an abortion to ask parental permission” as well.
“Although the issue remains divisive in majority Catholic Spain, the country’s parliament recently made it a criminal offense to harass or intimidate women with the object of impeding their right to abortion in response to frequent protests outside abortion clinics,” says Vice.
Isn’t it great that Catholicism, which the Spanish imposed on our ancestors, is holding us back from sex education and reproductive health services while teenage pregnancy booms? Don’t you just love seeing former colonizers move on from their imperialist days and enact progressive laws while their former colonies burn?
In the meantime, let’s hope our lawmakers see to it that we at least get free menstrual products like Scotland does.
Photo by Natracare on Unsplash
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