Recently a popular restaurant aggregator and food delivery start up in India, Zomato, made a move to introduce what is called “period leaves”. “At Zomato, we want to foster a culture of trust, truth and acceptance. Starting today, all women (including transgender people) at Zomato can avail up to 10 days of period leaves in a year,” Zomato founder and CEO said in a blog post on Saturday. Since the announcement there have been varying schools of thought on what this means to destigmatize menstruation socially and particularly in the corporate environment. I personally believe this is a step forward in the right direction. When I was young and had thorn in my finger, my mom used a needle to peel the layers of skin surrounding it so that the thorn is more accessible and she was able to completely pull it out not leaving any tiny bits behind. I relate that experience to this in a way that we have just started peeling the layers to remove the thorn. The journey has started and can’t be stopped which means that it is a commitment that we must see through. If my mom thought it was too hard and stopped midway, I guess the storyline would have completely differed. Apart from taking this move, it is of utmost importance to chalk out the follow up steps to ensure that the authentic reason to enable this holds true and is not misconstrued for any false pretenses.
Personally growing up in India I have experienced various scenarios when having your menstrual cycle was considered as something you had to hide or not speak about. It was not common to openly share and talk about what this means to us physically and emotionally. Right from the time you begin to menstruate and share the news with family that you have “matured” to when you talk to your friends about having “chums” (similar to Aunt Flo, which is a slang for having your periods), or telling your grandma you were having “one of those days”, I don’t think I ever called it out as exactly what it was. There was always a facade maintained when addressing this. Given the very fact that talking about it was done in camouflage you can only image what other implications this had on other aspects of your life. My best friend in school was not allowed to enter the kitchen and going to a temple or place of worship was considered a big taboo. Going to an all girls school there was never a dearth of examples of how this event in a women’s life manifested in so many shapes & forms. My mom is and was always one for being candid. Whether it comes to this or any matter of importance she is outspoken and doesn’t hide behind any delicate twisting of words. She has gotten into trouble because of this many a times because others were not ready to consume this. This meant that in our family this was a more a biological fact that anything else. I had to navigate from this environment to so many other circumstances when my unapologetic behavior was not looked at kindly. I had to conform to these socially acceptable conventions to fit in. This led to expressing oneself as minimal as possible when it comes to menstruation. Buying or borrowing sanitary napkins was a covert affair.Sharing the pain of cramps and methods to avoid or deal with it had to be done in morse code. Family events that almost always involved religious ceremonies became an occasion to publicly hide that you had your periods which always seemed ironic to me. It was like putting up a big shiny billboard that you had a secret but are not allowed to talk about it. If there was any male human being around, then the best path forward was to be in denial that this part the human life cycle even exists. I wasn’t sure then if this was to avoid the discomfort that the men have to acknowledge it or the awkwardness we as women ourselves had to overcome before taking that step. I was aware of much more outrageous reports of what this meant for women in other parts of the world and was always a topic of debate in our house.
Over a period of time there certainly have been several attempts to destigmatize this. Some are more subtle than the others but I don’t want to take away the effort behind it. From showing the “blue” blood to red, mothers assuming that the child feeling low or not performing well is indisputably cos of periods to actually having a conversation or making the packaging colorful to disguise the sanitary napkin to having witty lines such as “Basic Biology. Period” so that it allowed women and the society to embrace this and have a dialogue, there are pockets of progress being made. Even in the movie industry, there have been films and promotions aimed at highlighting the lack of conversations and hence calling attention to much more deep rooted issues such as lack of awareness of hygienically taking care of oneself, reach & cost of pads, health issues that one can face and most importantly showcasing that this not an embarrassment or a shameful event that women need to hide. Social media is able to exponentially increase this outreach but I do wonder if this is targeting the “already aware” group more than the ones that need it. Instagram accounts such as Pink Bits, Clue and many others are starting to break the silence around this topic. Campaigns such as Let’s Call Periods, Periods or BloodNormal are getting much deserved recognition even for just bringing the awkwardness to the forefront of the discussion.
That is why, with this recent announcement from Zomato, I feel like we are creating another much needed channel to not only support women but also build a culture of making the menstrual cycle part of our everyday lives. Of course just enabling these leaves, is just one part of it. Ensuring how well it is adopted by women, making sure there are no negative consequences because of this will play a major part on how this will get supported by others. I really hope this will not turn out to be just a PR initiative but the underlying issues continue to exist just under a new banner. Some of the things I would personally advocate for is to monitor this program with quantitative and qualitative data that brings forward what is working and what is not. Some examples are if there is human interaction around these leaves or is all of this so systematic that the hesitation/embarrassment of talking about it is still reigning, using this as an excuse for lack of personal development consciously or unconsciously, giving this as a reason to be victims of the “special treatment” campaign that some people seem to be calling this. Sharing this and the improvements made to make this successful publicly will bring others also together as part of this journey and encourage this progress to be more widespread. If done right, this can trigger a much more global change cascading its impact, starting from each individual household.