On Wednesday, I was scrolling through Facebook and I came across a New York Times article titled, In Some Countries, Women Get Days Off for Period Pain, which weighs the merits of allowing women paid leave during their period. I disagree with the idea of period leave. Period leave should not exist because it would serve to reinforce sexist stereotypes about women on their periods.

Throughout history, women’s menstrual cycles have been the subject of superstition, scrutiny, and outright discrimination. Women have been segregated from their society in red tents because some man got the idea that a natural bodily function made women unclean and unfit to work. Menstrual blood has been thought to be a poison that could someone within hours and it has been thought to cause women to be hysterical and irrational. A woman’s menstrual cycle has been used to justify denying her basic rights because she was considered to irrational to understand. Even today, period shaming has not disappeared. Tampons, pads, and cups have a pink tax levied on them because they are considered a luxury not a necessity; still perpetuating the idea that periods are abnormal. Women are conditioned to believe that a monthly biological function makes them less intelligent, less pure, and less productive than men.

Period leave rein trenches past and present stereotypes about menstruating women because women are being encouraged to not come to work for a few days every month. It tells women that society has not left past stereotypes of hysteria behind. Period Leave is a way to quietly push women out of promotions and important company decisions under the guise of empathy for women. Bosses who support period leave will use it against women who take advantage of it. They will use period leave as evidence that women are unreliable workers, despite period leave being paid leave. Once a boss gets the idea that one female employee is unreliable they will begin to assume that all female employees will be unreliable, and deny female employees promotions and opportunities they deserve. Period leave will stall the progress women have made in the workforce and give employers the power to discriminate against female employees for their biological functions.

Period Leave does not break down the taboo surrounding menstruation; it bolsters it. It operates with the mindset that periods make women useless in the work place and that a woman working on her period is odd. Inviting women to take time off work because of their period is a huge blow to women’s rights because the status of women should be elevated not pushed down. Therefore, I disagree with the idea of period leave because it only serves to set women back centuries. So women, pop an Advil, Pamprin, or Tylenol and be at work because your period is nothing to be ashamed of and your period does not make you less able to do your job.