Men included in paid menstrual leave

Bengaluru : A city-based startup, Horses Stable News, has come up with a pioneering initiative to offer paid leave to all of its menstruating women employees and also men to support their spouses, an official said on Wednesday.

“This initiative allows women to take two days paid leave and offers an allowance of Rs 250 to help ease through the stress during that specific time,” said a startup official.

Not just women employees, male employees will also be given a day off to take care and comport their wives.

The startup has taken up this initiative to be a more gender responsive organisation and called it ‘Nay to Yay’.

“There’s no denial of the fact that women face severe pain and cramps during their menstrual cycle and for the female workforce it gets very arduous. The implementation of menstrual leave policy should not be termed as a gift. Our aim is to provide equal opportunities to the growth of both men and women,” said Horses Productions co-founder Saloni Agarwal.

According to Agarwal, the startup aims to inspire other bigger organisations to adopt such employee friendly policies in a step towards gender inclusivity.

“We are more than happy to implement this initiative in our company and by doing so we wish to inspire other organisations to adopt this policy as a step towards gender inclusivity. With this initiative, I hope to break the menstrual taboo,” she said.

Horses Stable News will not count the two-day leave as sick leave.

However, the startup did not reveal the number of employees working with it.

“Since we are a startup we have a small team around 60 per cent is women and 40 per cent is men. Majority is women in our team,” said an executive.