If I feel bad enough that I can't do my work properly, I would simply leave, periods or not. (Normal paid sick leave - this is relatively easy in my country.) It has only happened once since I started working full time five years ago, that I was in so much pain from periods that I had to leave work. (And that was after taking two painkillers and even those didn't help.)
I certainly think a policy like this would feed into wage gap issues - it would definitely be unfair to pay the same amount of money to two employees, when one of them potentially works 12 days more in a year.
It sounds plausible that it would work better in a female dominated company -- I would rather suck up the pain than deal with stupid remarks of my male colleagues because they know I'm on my periods...
In general, I think women grow up with having to deal with their periods and the symptoms since childhood/teenage years, so it's just a normal part of life for us. Sure, some women have it way worse that others, but I'd say 90% can cope with it without problems and don't need extra holidays.
Though I do like the idea of giving those women in bad pain the opportunity to work from home! It doesn't necessarily help with the symptoms, but at least one can sit somewhere comfortable in PJs with a warm water bottle, which makes it a lot more bearable IMO.
I used to have one morning per month when I could barely move from the pain and the naproxen I took to make it bearable would prevent me from concentrating on anything more complicated than children's cartoons. But I stumbled into work and faked productivity anyway because I only got 10 days of PTO - vacation and sick days combined - every year. If I'd taken time off to deal with menstrual pain, I would never have had a vacation at all.
And I'm a lucky one. My menstrual symptoms were only moderately severe, and they usually eased by mid-afternoon. Given flexibility, I would probably have worked remotely, taken a couple hours off in the morning (only answering urgent communications), and worked a couple hours later in the evening to make up for it (instead of bolting out of the office at 5pm sharp because being there sucks even harder when you're bleeding like a stuck pig and your intestines are revolting against your OTC meds and you generally feel like you've been hit by a bus).
Probably 25-30% of women (even without additional medical conditions like PCOS) have more severe symptoms than I did. I do think it's valuable to take menstrual problems into account and I would appreciate a workplace that is sympathetic to women who suffer severe menstrual symptoms.
But I hate that this particular proposal creates gender differences in the workplace. Yes, it feeds into the wage gap and into reluctance to hire women. It also creates weird medical privacy issues as several other posters have pointed out.
The right solution probably involves some combination of schedule flexibility; remote work; more sick days for everyone, not just women who happen to menstruate; and separating sick days from vacation days.
Do you think this sort of policy feeds into wage gap stuff, or fights against it?
As a reasonably feminist guy, I can't decide how to feel about this. It seems like it's implying women can't work one day of every month, and also seems like a great idea because dealing with office folk while in pain is not fun.
Do you think a policy like this works better (only?) in a predominantly female company?