Picture this: It is 8:47 in the morning. A woman in her mid-20s sits hunched over her desk in a busy office. Her lower back feels like it is being squeezed in a vice. The cramps started before dawn. She is running a low fever. She has not eaten. And yet, here she is, because calling in sick means judgment and India has given her no legal right to do otherwise.
She will soldier through 8 hours, perform a role that demands her full cognitive presence, then go home to collapse. And she will do this again and again. For the next 3 decades of her working life.
This is a story about a country that recognises menstrual hygiene as a fundamental right in its highest courtroom and, in the very same breath, tells working women that their pain is a policy matter. “A period should end a sentence, not a girl’s education,” is what the Supreme Court said in the case of Jaya Thakur in January 2026.
Just six weeks later, on March 13, 2026, a Supreme Court Bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant dismissed another public interest litigation seeking nationwide menstrual leave. The Chief Justice's words this time were less pragmatic:
"The moment you say it is compulsory in law, nobody will give them jobs. Nobody will take them in the judiciary or government jobs; their career will be over."
Words to consider. The highest court in the land, the same institution that produced the Vishaka guidelines, that decriminalised Section 377, that upheld the right to privacy as fundamental, has just told the women of India that the solution to their discrimination problem is to ask less of the law.
India's constitutional architecture is ostensibly generous to women. We are guaranteed the right to life with dignity and to exercise free profession. The State is empowered to make special provisions for women and secure humane work conditions.
And yet, when these provisions were stacked against the reality of menstrual pain at work, the Supreme Court chose to route the matter to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, where similar proposals have been stagnant for years.
The contradiction in both cases is stark. In Jaya Thakur, the Supreme Court held that access to safe, effective and affordable menstrual hygiene products is a component of the fundamental right to life. But when the same biological reality was transplanted to the workplace where the same women spend a third of their adult lives, it suddenly became a "contractual and economic issue."
With due respect, this is not judicial restraint. Itt is judicial inconsistency in the garb of institutional humility.
Article 15(3) finds no meaningful place in the dismissal order. The Supreme Court's own Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes asks judges to resist assumptions that turn biological realities into professional liabilities. The Court did not cite it. Instead, it echoed an untested market assumption: that legal menstrual leave would make women un-hireable.
The term "statistical discrimination" is immediately brought to mind. The possibility of some employers discriminating against women with menstrual leave entitlements would infer that the State should not create such entitlements. By that logic, maternity benefits for pregnancy, childbirth, medical termination of pregnancy and surrogacy should not exist either. We should not have reservation policies. Why have a law redessing workplace sexual harassment complaints by a woman?
The flaw in that argument is obvious. The answer to anticipated discrimination is stronger anti-discrimination enforcement, not the withdrawal of the right itself.
The menstrual leave debate in India is not new. It has simply been consistently deferred. Bihar has offered 2 days of special leave per month to women government employees since 1992, which is 34 years of administrative feasibility. The State’s economy did not collapse, not did its female workforce become less competitive or effective. Employers continued to hire women. Bihar, one of India's less resource-rich states, has demonstrated that menstrual leave is operationally possible.
Kerala extended menstrual leave to female students at Industrial Training Institutes in 2023, allowing 2 paid days per month with schedule adjustments to preserve training hours. Karnataka went further in November 2025, mandating 1 paid day of menstrual leave per month across all sectors, public and private, for women between 15 and 52 years of age, without requiring a medical certificate. Odisha, in October 2024, gave women government employees 12 additional casual leave days annually. The Sikkim High Court has permitted 2-3 days off with medical documentation. Bihar has extended its scheme to contractual workers under the Bihar Vikas Mission.
Several law schools including NALSAR and NLU Delhi have adopted one-day monthly menstrual leave on self-declaration while retaining overall attendance norms.
These are not pilot projects or proposals. They are functioning and effective systems. And yet, when Advocate Shailendra Mani Tripathi brought this evidence before the Supreme Court for the third time on March 13, the Court referred the matter back to the Ministry, which has been notably reticent on this issue since 2023.
A private member's Bill for the Right of Women to Menstrual Leave and Free Access to Menstrual Products, introduced in 2022, proposed 3 days of paid menstrual leave as an extension of Article 21's guarantee. It lapsed without meaningful debate.
Thus, despite the sound legislation to enable women to contribute meaningfully to the economy, we still do not have a Central law that acknowledges that menstruation can be prohibitively debilitating and that working women deserve a legal right to rest and remain in the active workforce.
The argument that menstrual leave will make women appear weaker or less capable is not merely paternalistic; it fundamentally misunderstands workplace productivity. A woman who takes 1 day off each month to recover is more productive than a woman who drags herself to work in physical agony and resultant work lags. This is not a feminist argument but an organisational efficiency argument. Companies like Zomato, Swiggy, BYJU's, Culture Machine and Gozoop understood this. They introduced voluntary menstrual leave policies and retained their female talent at higher rates and equal, if not higher, efficiency.
The Supreme Court acknowledged these voluntary corporate initiatives as "excellent." But voluntary policies cover a minuscule fraction of India's 120 million working women. The vast majority, especially those in the unorganised sector, in factories, in domestic work, in agriculture, in contract employment, have no such protection. At an already marginalised setting, these women cannot negotiate their way into workplace dignity. They need the law to do it for them.
Countries across Asia, Africa, and Europe have navigated this terrain. Some imperfectly, but all with more political will than generally seen in India thus far.
Japan was among the first countries in the world to codify menstrual leave, doing so under the 1947 Labour Standards Act. The law does not mandate paid leave and uptake is low. Barely 1 per cent of eligible women use it, largely because of workplace stigma and the discomfort of discussing menstruation with male supervisors. Japan's experience is instructive not as a success story but as a lesson: the law matters, but so does the culture built around it.
Indonesia has provided 2 days of paid menstrual leave per month since 1948, codified again under the Labour Act of 2003. Zambia introduced "Mother's Day" in 2015: 1 paid day per month, no medical certificate required, no prior notice necessary. South Korea has offered 1 day per month since 2001, with financial compensation for women who choose not to take it. Taiwan's Gender Equity at Work Act provides 3 days of menstrual leave annually, separate from sick leave.
In February 2023, Spain became the first European country to legislate paid menstrual leave - 3 days per month, extendable to 5, funded through the public social security system, available from the first day without prior social security contributions. It covers not just dysmenorrhea but associated conditions including endometriosis, fibroids, pelvic inflammatory disease and polycystic ovary syndrome.
Spain's law was not universally celebrated. Conservative parties warned of employment discrimination. Trade unions raised concerns about scope. The debate was fierce. But here is what Spain understood that we have not: the answer to feared discrimination is not the absence of rights. The answer is enforcement, education and cultural change alongside the law.
Mexico's approach is even more interesting. The State of Mexico extended what it calls "physiological leave" not just to women with dysmenorrhea, but to people of all genders dealing with menopause, the climacteric phase and andropause. In doing so, Mexico reframed the conversation entirely - from a women's accommodation to a human physiology accommodation.
The fear of employer discrimination is real in a country where women continue to be marginalised. Any Indian legislation must be accompanied by strong anti-discrimination provisions, making it illegal to factor menstrual leave usage into hiring, promotion, or performance evaluation decisions. Karnataka's 2025 policy is a useful model: it mandates leave and leaves room for anti-discrimination enforcement.
The concern about low uptake is also valid. If women are too ashamed or afraid to use the leave, the law becomes performative. This is where self-declaration, rather than medical certification, becomes critical. Requiring a doctor's note to "prove" period pain is both invasive and inaccessible for women in rural areas or the informal sector. Zambia's model, where no explanation is required, has far greater dignity built into it.
There is also the question of coverage. A national policy that applies only to formal sector employees leaves out domestic workers, agricultural labourers, gig economy workers and daily wage earners - the women who are most economically vulnerable. Any meaningful menstrual leave framework must include provisions for the unorganised sector, perhaps modelled on the Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act of 2008.
Chief Justice Kant noted that no woman had personally approached the Supreme Court seeking menstrual leave. Women have not approached the Court because the cost of doing so - financially, professionally, socially - is prohibitive for most. Women have not approached the Court because menstruation is still treated as something shameful and private in most Indian workplaces. The prospect of standing before a bench of judges to articulate monthly pain is, for many, simply unthinkable. Women have not approached the Court because they have spent their entire professional lives adapting, suppressing, managing and concealing and the idea that the law could actually help them has not felt like a realistic possibility. The absence of individual petitioners is not evidence of the absence of need. It is evidence of the depth of the stigma, of being perceived weak or needy.
A central menstrual leave policy for India does not need to be radical to be transformative. It needs to be practical, enforceable and designed with the diversity of India's workforce in mind. At minimum, it should provide 1-2 days of paid leave per menstrual cycle for all working women in both the organised and unorganised sectors. It should operate on self-declaration, without medical certification requirements. It should be funded jointly by the employer and the State for small businesses, removing the cost burden that might otherwise deter hiring. It should be accompanied by explicit anti-discrimination provisions making it illegal to penalise women for using this leave. It should include awareness and sensitisation mandates for employers. And it should extend, as a matter of public health, to students.
The constitutional basis is clear. Article 21 covers health and dignity. Article 42 mandates humane working conditions. Article 15(3) permits women-specific measures. The legislative precedent exists in the Maternity Benefit Act. The State-level evidence of feasibility exists in Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala and Odisha. What is missing is legislative intent .
It is odd that the world's largest democracy - that speaks of Nari Shakti, that celebrates women warriors and goddesses - decides to inform its working women that a law protecting them from having to work through monthly physical anguish would end their careers.
The Supreme Court's March 2026 dismissal is not the end of this conversation. It is, in some ways, a clarifying moment. It tells us that the judiciary, for now, has chosen to defer to a legislature that has shown no urgency on this question. It tells us that the drive must now come from somewhere else for a genuine space of equity. From state governments building on Karnataka's lead, from companies normalising the practice, from women speaking about their menstrual health without apology and from a public that stops treating this real concern as a fringe feminist demand and starts recognising it as a basic question of workplace and economic dignity.
Women are not asking for special treatment. They are asking to be treated as full human beings, with bodies that do specific things, in a country that claims to value their contribution.
Varuni Mohan and Debjani Aich are Partners at CMS INDUSLAW.
Views are personal.