Thoughts on this article:
Productivity loss due to menstruation-related symptoms: a nationwide cross-sectional survey among 32 784 women.
I’ve not been able to find much research on the impact menstruation has on female performance, so this study is a great resource!
This is a Dutch study, led by gynaecologist Bertho Nieboer, and one of it’s main objectives is to understand more about absenteeism and presenteeism due to menstruation-related symptoms (MRSs).
To make sense of those terms I drew more bread..
Absenteeism – time away from work or school
Presenteeism – productivity loss while present at work or school
The data was collected via a survey that was distributed through social media platforms (mainly Facebook and Twitter) to reach a wide random sample of different backgrounds, medical conditions and levels of education.
From reading the article it sounds like there are a lot of parallels between the questions asked in this survey and questions I have formulated for my own research, however I have not been able to download their survey to be able to compare properly.
At the time of reading this study I have not closed data collection through my survey (they are both live and open at the moment) and have therefore not looked at my data (except for the free text fields) to avoid getting biased by the partial data.
The article distinguishes between women who work and women who study and is therefore an even better reference to use for my research and potentially compare my data to.
Below I discuss my thoughts on some of the points that stood out for me in this study.
MRSs accounted to almost a quarter (24%) of total absenteeism for women who were working and studying. However only a fifth of those (20.1%) stated openly that MRSs were the main reason.
This is a point that I am also particularly interested in. I appreciate that periods are very personal and even in an ideal society not every menstruating person would feel comfortable disclosing it as a reason for absence. My hypothesis is that due to historic presentation of periods as something ‘dirty’ and the fact that it is a very underrepresented topic in any form of media and as a research subject, persons who menstruate still feel inhibited and fear the consequences of talking openly about menstruation being a cause for absenteeism or presenteeism, especially in a professional context.
Being a university tutor with a duty of care towards my students I want to contribute to a more open discussion about menstruation.
Women aged 21 and below had much higher percentage of absenteeism and presenteeism.
This is highly relevant for my sample as Y2 and Y3 BA students often fall within that age bracket.
My survey questions don’t distinguish that distinctly between absenteeism and presenteeism but they do enquire about how menstruation impacts concentration and looks for an indication of amount of absence during the last 12 month period due to MRSs.
76.1% considered dysmenorrhoea a normal part of the menstrual cycle
(Dysmenorrhoea – menstrual pain, for example cramping just before or during menstruation.)
From this I take that a lot of women don’t question the level of pain they are in which might be due to lack of information on a healthy cycle or even shame to discuss with a medical professional.
Combining this with the increase in time of absenteeism / presenteeism in women aged 21 and below it is my assumption that the older we (people who menstruate) get, the more used we get to the pain but also to suffering through it silently because of societal pressure. I’ve been dealing with it for 20 years now – I should be used to it, right?
It may also be generational differences due to representation of menstruation and stigmas at the time of upbringing. I hope that the younger generations nowadays feel more comfortable talking about topics related to menstruation.
Women want more openness about MRSs in the employment setting.
For my survey I tried to stay away from ‘leading’ questions that have no finite amount of answers, but rather asked those as open questions. For example one of the questions in my survey is:
“Is there anything that would help you within the university environment or during class to feel more supported when you are menstruating? Please give details.”
I wanted to know what potential hidden or otherwise unknown implications periods can have on the individual instead of listing possible actions that I might have found through my research or based on my own experience.
The questionnaire of the study had a comparable question with an explicit list of options (multiple answers possible) including ‘more flexibility during periods’ or ‘the ability to work from home’. (Again I’ve not been able to access the questionnaire so can only reference the answers mentioned in this paper)
For me one of the good outcomes of the pandemic is exactly this: more flexibility in working times and modes of working as well as highlighting the importance of mental health considerations. This is probably one of the reasons I had the idea for this topic.
In terms of the scale of enquiry it seems to be almost one of a kind. It only references one other study from Japan of a similar nature and notes that “To our knowledge, Tanaka’s study is the only other published study on absenteeism and presenteeism due to MRSs in the general female population.” (p.6)
[This quote references Tanaka E, Momoeda M, Osuga Y, et al. Burden of menstrual symptoms in Japanese women: results from a survey-based study.]
I will try to get hold of that paper as well.
Reference:
Schoep ME, Adang EMM, Maas JWM, et al. 2019. ‘Productivity loss due to menstruation-related symptoms: a nationwide cross-sectional survey among 32 748 women’. BMJ Open 2019. Available at: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/6/e026186 (Accessed 15th October 2021)