In recent months, more than 10 Chinese municipalities and provinces have issued local regulations that give women who suffer from severe menstural cramps leave from work in an effort to protect women's health and rights. Many in China's online community, however, worried that such regulations would only intensify gender discrimination in the job market.
According to media reports, this "menstrual cramp leave" was based on an old national regulation issued in 1993. The regulation covered two medical conditions: painful menstruation, known medically as dysmenorrhea, and heavy, irregular bleeding, known as menometrorrhagia. Any woman who has a doctor's note confirming at least one of those ailments may take one or two days off of work, according to the 1993 regulation. In the decades since, many experts have appealed for local governments to implement the regulation and make this an option for female employees.
The potential of this extra benefit, however, did not receive unanimous praise from the public. Many are concerned that such a regulation will make it harder for women to find a job. A local paper in Hubei Province, for example, recently revealed that a local teacher suffered such painful periods that she asked her doctor for a hysterectomy. Even so, she refused to take advantage of this medical leave option. Her story has aroused the sympathy of many Chinese women, especially those who also suffer from excruciating periods. However, most of them said that they have felt reluctant to ask for leave for fear of upsetting their bosses.
China's labor laws and other relevant regulations include many rules that specifically protect women's rights. For example, Chinese women are guaranteed a lengthy maternity leave. However, these pro-women policies in turn make some employers refrain from hiring women, for fear that they will need to take long periods of time off of work. After China's Family Planning Policy was fully lifted in January, numerous media outlets reported that many employers are intentionally avoiding hiring women of childbearing age. Some have even ordered female employees to arrange their pregnancies around the companies' schedules. Netizens lamented that these regulations that protect women's rights will remain paper tigers and even have a negative effect on their employment unless they are implemented as well as they are in developed countries.
Cartoon by Luo Qi