Giving Australians 12 days leave each year for menstrual pain, menopause and IVF could save a fortune, study finds, but only a handful of workplaces offer it
Giving all Australian workers 12 days of leave for reproductive health matters like menstrual pain, menopause, IVF and vasectomies would be vastly cheaper for everyone than maintaining the status quo, new research has found.Services Union, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre found it would cost an estimated $920m annually to make 12 days of reproductive leave a universal employee entitlement, but it costs approximately $26.
Those could include dealing with period pain, endometriosis, IVF and other fertility related procedures, miscarriages and terminations, vasectomies and hysterectomies, pregnancy, breastfeeding and lactation, or contraception.
These all have impacts on people’s ability to work, including through absenteeism, “presenteeism” and changes to personal circumstances, such as working less or retiring early. A smattering of private-sector employers in Australia, such as Cbus and Aware Super, offer menopause and menstruation leave. Reproductive leave, however, is much wider in scope.
Dr Michelle O’Shea, senior lecturer at Western Sydney University’s school of business, says offering reproductive leave is “about equity, not equality” – that is, giving every worker the tools they need to succeed, not just treating everyone the same.“We’re not looking at equality of opportunity, we’re looking at ways that workplaces can be made accessible for everyone, not just the unencumbered male,” O’Shea says.
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