Menstrual Leave Must Reduce Bias, Not Raise Hiring Costs
Poorly designed entitlements may risk reinforcing the very exclusion they aim to fix
A background note can be accessed here: Bill Proposes 2 Days Paid Menstrual Leave
Find the companion commentary here: Design, Not Entitlement, Will Decide Menstrual Leave’s Impact
Divya Pandey: Senior Evaluation Specialist, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie)
SDG 5: Gender Equality | SDG 8: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Ministry of Labour and Employment | Ministry of Women and Child Development
The Bill mandates two days of paid menstrual leave monthly for female employees. Given India’s fragile female labour-force participation and the cost sensitivity of many private employers (notably MSMEs), how should the legislation be designed to minimise the risk of employer discrimination in hiring while still delivering meaningful menstrual equity?
Menstrual health challenges intersect with stigma, restrictive norms, and inadequate workplace infrastructure. Thoughtfully designed, the policy can help sustain women’s labour-force participation by legitimising rest and recovery in settings where informal coping mechanisms often lead to absenteeism or exit.
The central risk lies in employer response. In contexts with weak workplace protections, rigid compliance, or poor privacy safeguards, menstrual leave may raise perceived hiring costs for women, especially for MSMEs operating under tight margins. Employers may respond through discrimination, discouraging leave uptake, shifting women into precarious contracts, or avoiding female hires altogether. These risks are amplified when firms lack the capacity to absorb additional cost or administrative burdens.
Evidence suggests caution. Menstrual health explains some gender differences in illness-related absenteeism but little gender gap in earnings, which largely reflects broader labour-market inequalities. In India, women support menstrual leave but fear intensifying bias.
To balance equity with incentives, legislation should emphasise flexibility and cost-sharing: adjustable hours, rest facilities, pooled or convertible leave, phased MSME compliance, temporary payroll support, and strong anti-discrimination and privacy protections, supported by clear employer guidance.
Monthly paid leave could alter labour availability and operating costs, especially in sectors with high female concentration. What empirical safeguards or phased rollout mechanisms would be prudent to ensure firms adapt without unintended job losses or informalisation?
The impact of monthly paid menstrual leave will vary sharply by sector and firm size. While two days of leave may be absorbed in professional or flexible roles, it can create operational challenges in shift-based services, manufacturing, or workplaces with thin staffing buffers, especially where labour substitution is costly. A uniform mandate that does not account for these sectoral differences may increase the risk of job losses or shifts toward informal work.
A prudent policy approach is to pilot the mandate among large, formal firms, where compliance capacity, payroll systems, and data availability are stronger. Evidence from these pilots can inform phased extension to smaller firms, calibrated to observed effects on absenteeism, retention, costs, and hiring behaviour.
Flexibility within the pay period is critical. Allowing workers to choose between leave, adjusted hours, or flexible scheduling can limit disruption while preserving income continuity. Where mandates are inflexible, firms may offset costs by limiting women’s hiring or shifting them into lower-quality roles, undermining the policy’s objective.
For MSMEs, complementary measures will be necessary: temporary wage subsidies or cash support, simplified compliance, and access to shared staffing arrangements. Clear employer-facing guidance and privacy-preserving implementation can further reduce uncertainty and stigma. Ongoing evaluation using administrative and payroll data – disaggregated by sector and firm size – should track both intended and unintended effects, allowing timely policy correction.
The Bill layers new gender-specific entitlements onto existing frameworks. How should policymakers assess the aggregate effect of gender-targeted leave on long-run workplace equality, social-security coverage and women’s economic empowerment, and when might gender-neutral alternatives better advance inclusion?
In India, women’s employment outcomes are shaped by persistent disadvantages linked to childcare responsibilities, unpaid domestic work, and occupational segregation. As such, gender-neutral policies alone may not address barriers to participation or advancement. Well-designed, women-specific provisions can support health and wellbeing and help sustain labour-force participation, with longer-term benefits for productivity and economic empowerment.
However, experience with maternity benefits highlights important trade-offs. After the 2017 increase in paid maternity leave from 12 to 26 weeks, evidence from large household datasets showed declines in employment and earnings among women of prime fertility age, driven by higher hiring thresholds as employers absorbed the full cost of leave. This reflects the broader “motherhood penalty,” where anticipated caregiving responsibilities influence employer behaviour.
Menstrual leave raises similar concerns. Without cost-sharing, flexibility, and safeguards, women-specific entitlements may reinforce discomfort around menstruation and discourage hiring. Gender-neutral alternatives – paid sick leave for all workers, flexible work arrangements, or general health-related leave – may advance inclusion more effectively while avoiding signalling effects that heighten bias.
The choice need not be binary. A layered approach that combines targeted protections with universal health and flexibility provisions, backed by cost-sharing and continuous evaluation, offers a more credible path to long-run workplace equality and women’s economic empowerment.
Author:
Divya Pandey is a Senior Evaluation Specialist at the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie).
Views are personal.