Productivity loss in a menstruating being

You are a menstruating young girl of say 19 year old, you often feel emotionally, physically, socially and mentally drained. You try to understand what’s happening with you as no one being bad to you, neither you faced any self-disappointment. So, you don’t get any reason and you just wanted to cry. Now as you yourself don’t understand what’s happening with you, you certainly will fail to make your friends explain what you are going through. Here what every girls do is either blaming her phone, academic stress, her productive skips, her health, her fate, her family issues, her friends or her boyfriend.

Some calculations kills us from inside, like there is Pre-mentruation syndrome before periods, then there is periods. When you are done and as soon as you start living life already half a month gone. Your newly made plans are at stop and you have to again set your mind to continue them.

Most of you have heard of PCOS and PCOD, and its rising cases. Its good that there is awareness of the same but these are lifestyle disorders. Again imagine a life of a girl of 18-22 years old living in a hostel studying in a new city, yet manages to cook her all three time healthy meals, doing certain exercises, scheduling fun, and productive spends in initial days. Slowly her sleep schedule will be disturbed, she will skip breakfast, replace cooked healthy diet with quick junk, or binge eating late at night disrupts metabolism and will rise to weight gain and often feel low energised. There are high chance of her being diagnosed with PCOS.

Even staying at home with family might help you maintain proper balance diet with right amount of vitamins and minerals, but academic stress, family pressure, family duties, stressing about future in teenage and in trying twenties is so attached part of your schedule that it can easily affect your lifestyle. You have to prioritize self-care, diet, certain workouts, avoiding overeating in stress and in night, questioning stress its relevance in your life to present and affect you.

Even many of our classmates have a different social stigmas to face where her own family treat her like untouchables during her menstruation in her own home. As per this if nation is expecting more from women to contribute then first there are need to have changes in our systems first.

What our legislation have for us?

There are some cases where untouchability of women on menstrual cycle, stigma of avoiding going to places like kitchen and worship place, and for women in menstruation and women facing pre-menstruation syndrome.

66 girls were stripped to check for menstruation by Shree Sahjanand Girls Institute (SSGI) in Bhuj town of Kutch in 2020. After public and media outrage, the accused were booked under Indian Penal Code sections 384 (extortion), 355 (assault with intent to dishonour a person) and 506 (criminal intimidation). After the initial probe, the in-charge vice-chancellor of the university justified the action, He said that the girls were checked because the hostel has a rule that girls on their menstrual cycle are not supposed to take meals with other inmates. After this incident, 2 activists filed a PIL before the Gujarat HC. The PIL seeked declaration of the need to frame legislation that deals with the exclusionary practices against women on the basis of their menstruation status.

In 2018, the Rajasthan High Court ruled that premenstrual syndrome (PMS) could be considered a valid ground for pleading insanity in a criminal appeal. This means that if a person, particularly a woman, commits a crime during a time when they are severely affected by PMS, which includes symptoms like extreme mood swings, irritability, and mental distress, it could be used as a defense to argue that the person was not in a sound state of mind at the time of the crime. The court's decision recognized that the psychological and emotional impact of PMS can affect a person’s ability to understand the consequences of their actions, potentially leading to criminal behavior.

Sabarimala Temple Entry incident, the Supreme Court in 2019 noted that “Notions of “purity and pollution”, which stigmatized individuals, can have no place in a constitutional regime. Regarding menstruation as polluting or impure, and worse still, imposing exclusionary disabilities on the basis of menstrual status, is against “the dignity of women which is guaranteed by the Constitution”.

The Delhi High Court in 2020 had asked government authorities to treat a PIL seeking direction to grant paid period leave to all women employees for four days each month and payment of overtime allowance in case the women opt to work during the menstruation period, as a representation.

Knowing to care yourself right is the first step towards having good healthy months to be productive and grow.