Period leave: Either trust women, or make them prove it. You can’t do both

The piece is not anti-period leave. It’s about the tension between privacy, practicality, and unintended consequences in workplace policy design, writes Annalinde Nickisch.

There’s a lot of momentum behind “period leave” – or, more broadly, reproductive health leave.

On paper, it sounds simple. Supportive. Progressive.

Until you actually try to make it work.

Because the moment you move from idea to implementation, you hit a problem no one seems to want to talk about.

It’s not cost. It’s not fairness. It’s not even whether the underlying need is real.

It’s this: Do you trust women – or do you make them prove it?

And “period leave,” as it’s currently being proposed, tries to do both.

The policy itself is well-intentioned. Most proposals centre around creating an additional pool of paid leave – 10 days – to cover reproductive health: menstrual pain, endometriosis, in vitro fertilisation (IVF), menopause, miscarriage, and more.

These are real experiences. They affect people’s ability to work. They’re often underreported or pushed through in silence.

That part isn’t controversial. The issue is what happens next.

Because the moment you create a separate category of leave, you create a new question:

How does anyone know which leave applies?

Right now, personal leave operates on a deliberately simple principle. You’re either fit for work, or you’re not. A medical certificate confirms that – without requiring you to explain why.

And that’s not a flaw. It’s a feature.

It protects privacy. It avoids unnecessary disclosure. It recognises that people shouldn’t have to explain whether they have a migraine, COVID-19, or something far more personal.

But a separate category of “reproductive health leave” changes that.

It shifts the system from a functional test – can you work? – to a classification test: what kind of condition is this?

And that’s where things start to unravel. Because from here, there are only two ways this works.

Option one: You trust women

You allow people to access reproductive health leave without requiring anything beyond a standard certificate.

But in that case, the distinction between leave types becomes largely theoretical. If a certificate simply says “unfit for work,” there is no practical way to determine which category it falls under. In effect, you’ve created an additional pool of leave based on self-classification.

Option two: You require proof

You try to control the system by asking for confirmation that the leave relates to a reproductive health issue.

And this is where it gets uncomfortable – quickly.

Because what does “proof” actually look like? Do you require more detailed medical certificates? Do you ask employees to disclose the nature of their condition? Do you start defining what qualifies and what doesn’t?

At that point, you’re no longer just asking whether someone is unfit for work. You’re asking why.

And for many of these conditions, that’s not a neutral question.

Reproductive health can involve deeply personal experiences – IVF, miscarriage, menopause, conditions people may not even share with close colleagues.

Are we really comfortable designing a system that nudges people into disclosing that?

This is the tension at the centre of the debate – and it’s not being addressed clearly enough.

You cannot design a policy that is fully private, tightly controlled, and immune to misuse all at once.

Something has to give

Spain – one of the only countries to formally implement a version of menstrual leave – provides a real-world example of what this looks like in practice. The system requires medical certification tied to a diagnosed condition, rather than a simple “unfit for work” model.

Uptake has been extremely low.

The need hasn’t disappeared. But the design raises an obvious question: when access depends on medical validation and disclosure, how many people simply opt out?

There’s also a second layer to this conversation that’s even harder to talk about.

Hiring decisions aren’t made in a vacuum. At the margins – in close calls, smaller businesses, roles where absence is harder to absorb – perceived risk does play a role, whether anyone admits it or not.

And while these policies are framed as gender-neutral, most of what they cover sits within female reproductive health.

There is also a cost. Ten additional days of paid leave per year is not neutral – particularly for smaller businesses. It increases the cost of absence, and by extension, the cost of hiring.

So the question is blunt:

Will this make some employers more hesitant to hire women?

Not openly. Not in writing. But in those final decision moments – between two equally strong candidates – does a gender-linked entitlement shift the calculus?

Legally, it shouldn’t. But it’s naïve to assume it won’t. And that’s the part of this conversation that’s missing.

So, what’s the alternative?

Instead of carving out more and more specific categories of leave, it’s worth asking a more fundamental question: Is what we already have actually enough?

In Australia, full-time employees are entitled to 10 days of paid personal leave per year. But is that realistic?

In countries like Germany, the United Kingdom and France, the baseline looks very different.

In Germany, employees receive 100 per cent of their salary for up to six weeks per illness, followed by income support for up to 78 weeks.

In the United Kingdom, statutory sick pay is available for up to 28 weeks per illness.

In France, income support can continue for up to 360 days, depending on the condition.

In Australia, that safety net doesn’t exist in the same form.

If you have caring responsibilities, those 10 days can disappear quickly. If you have a chronic condition, they’re gone before the year is halfway through. If something more significant happens, they’re nowhere near enough.

So rather than creating new, increasingly specific buckets of leave that force people to categorise – and potentially disclose – what they’re going through, maybe the better question is:

Why are we trying to solve this with more categories instead of asking whether the base entitlement is fit for purpose?

Because many people don’t need a different type of leave. They just need enough of it – without having to explain why. If the goal is to genuinely support women, then design matters just as much as intent.

Because this ultimately comes back to a simple choice:

Do we trust women to manage their health – or do we design systems that require them to prove it?

“Period leave”, as it’s currently being discussed, tries to sit in the middle. And that’s exactly why it doesn’t work.

Annalinde Nickisch is the chief people officer at Probiotec Limited.

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