Women with endometriosis and PCOS need menstrual leave!

By Elloise Alexander

Endometriosis and PCOS are debilitating conditions that women can suffer from. Their conditions can be dismissed by doctors and by they themselves. They ignore their symptoms or live with their conditions telling themselves that ‘every woman is like this’ but that isn’t true, not every woman is losing time in work because of their period. The way that the pressure could be eased with these conditions is to introduce menstrual leave in the UK.

Menstrual leave is where a woman with severely painful period symptoms gets paid or un-paid (depending on their employer) leave from work. Spain was the first country in Europe to invoke menstrual leave back in February 2023. As part of their sexual and reproductive health bill. Women who have debilitating period pain get time from work while menstruating. The leave requires a doctor's note and lasts three days, five if the woman experiences disabling periods which is what can happen when suffering with PCOS and endometriosis. At the moment there is nowhere in the UK that offers menstrual leave. This means that women in the UK with these conditions are having to go to work and are in severe pain or miss work and either lose money or worse their job

Menstruation is often painful normally, imagine it with these conditions

So, how exactly do these conditions effect women to the extent menstrual leave is needed. Endometriosis is a uterine condition where the lining of the endometrium (the lining of the uterus) is thicker and grows in the fallopian tubes and throughout the ovaries as well as the uterus. This means that when the woman has her period she is in severe pain and experiences heavy bleeding, because it isn't only the uterus that's shedding.

PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) is a condition that effects the way the ovaries work and has more of an effect on fertility than endometriosis does. The specific cause is largely unclear but the way it affects a woman is large fluid-filled sacs surrounding the eggs which leads to irregular periods or no period at all, excess androgen which is a “male” hormone which leads to more hair growth on the face and body, hair loss on the head and weight gain. These symptoms cause both physical and mental pain.

Both conditions being as debilitating as each other with PCOS affecting up to 12% of women, while up to 15% of women have endometriosis, you would think that society would be more understanding.

The main problems when it comes to PCOS and endometriosis are that they are both conditions that aren’t researched enough. Because of this they both have unknown causes, don’t have a cure (other than removing the uterus) and when someone has these conditions employers don’t understand their pain. Not having menstrual leave is surprising especially for Scotland who were the first UK country that made period care free and have the pickup-my-period app which shows on the map where you can get free period care. The UK needs to follow Spain in their sexual and reproductive bill and make women’s lives easier.