He grabbed a yellow post-it and started pointing. It didn’t take long for him to do the math. Forty years of menstruation every month, at twelve months a year, we get pregnant and extras, so many months, so many hours … I wanted to know what would have been saved with labor law by painful rules, if it had existed in its time. Three days a month, for twelve months, thirty-six days off a year. Multiplied by forty years of bleeding, a total of 1,440 holidays and pay.
Recognizing the caricature of the calculus and beyond the facetiousness, the result is terribly graphic. The woman in the post-it belongs to the group of women who have gone through working life with Amazonian rules without a word. Maybe we did wrong. One day we learned that the Japanese had been on sick leave since 1947, and we didn’t even tell our men about it.
There is a simulator that reproduces menstrual pain, graded by intensities. The other day, without going any further, I had a good time watching the experiment on TV. They applied the device to the abdomen of male volunteers – some in favor of the new law, out of conjugal solidarity, others furiously against it – who passed through the street. They all expressed their surprise, squirmed in pain and asked to stop the joke.
I’m not sure if this progress has been successful, let me reflect on the pros and cons and reread the reasons for Irene Montero, Yolanda Díaz and Nadia Calviño. That of stigmatization, of endometriosis. But what I do know is that the professional lives of some of them — I save them as burdensome anecdotes as those of the military — would have been much more bearable.
Forty years of iron deficiency anemia have suddenly ended with a menopause, against all odds, encouraging. Finally, at least walk without snorting.
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