A media company in Mumbai is giving women a day off during their periods

I fully support letting people go home when they are objectively counterproductive.

13 would be closer to the average ;)

But you're right. A number of people I've spoken to about parental leave (not all of whom have been men) are skeptical of paternity leave because they largely see maternity leave as an opportunity to recover from the physical and medical hardships of child birth, with emotional bonding merely an ancillary benefit. Even if that's true, creating gender independent norms avoids giving ammunition to the quietly sexist eye-rollers who use maternity leave to devalue female coworkers. While it would be better to just make a quantum leap to the ideal world where no one holds those opinions in the first place, existing cultural norms and beliefs naturally constrain policy on a pragmatic level and we have to work within those constraints as best we can.

It's funny to see these fumbling efforts toward those goals by companies from a different culture than my own, though. I can't imagine even the most politically naive and insensitive American manager suggesting this idea, outside of a Michael Scott from the Office type parody. Is it because we tackled basic issues with women in the workplace earlier than India because we modernized faster? Like is this the sort of idea bumbling Dilbert-esque middle managers in corporate America proposed during the mid-70s? Or is there some underlying difference in cultural taboos about discussing periods? I have to confess that India is one country where I am not very well informed about the culture on the ground as I haven't spent any time there.

Europe by and large doesn't know the concept of "sick days". When you get sick, you stay home. If you get cancer, you stay off work for a year if necessary.

In my country, there's a system to reimburse companies for their costs after a certain number of sick days–3 weeks I believe. That protects smaller companies, who might otherwise get into serious trouble if, say, one of three employees can no longer work but still gets a salary.

Of course there are trade-offs involved. It does cost some money, and it does add a bit of bureaucracy. Some abuse may also happen, although by and large it's rather low–there are some 'social' control mechanisms, and the data pretty clearly shows that absenteeism is directly linked to employee satisfaction.

Throwaway because no one wants to hear about periods. I am a woman and one time my body decided to have an extremely heavy and painful flow for about a week straight. I had been sick with a cold immediately before that, so I had already let my employer know that I was not feeling well and would be taking some days off, and I did not feel the need to tell my employer every little detail about what was going on. Every morning I would text something along the lines of, "I'm still not feeling well."

After about the third day of being out my boss texted me with a suggestion that I go see a doctor. When I finally got back to the office he wanted to see a doctor's note. I did not go to the doctor, because more extreme bleeding is something that is expected after having an IUD inserted.

I was at home in extreme pain, changing out adult diapers about 3 times a day that were completely soaked with blood. I think this 100% is a good enough reason to not come into work, and it's sort of bull that my boss was asking about my personal business when we are already a company that combines sick days with vacation days as PTO.

I actually did fill my boss in on all the gory details since he wouldn't let up on the doctor's note, but this is absolutely something that I should NEVER have to disclose to someone to be able to keep my job.

I don't really have a good solution here. I want the 12 extra holiday days for everyone solution to work, but there will always be people abusing their limited amount of power to unnecessarily investigate what we are using our PTO for.