L'instauration d¿un congé menstruel en Belgique renforcerait-il les inégalités de genre et impacterait-il notre vision de la position de la femme dans le milieu du travail ?

Abstract

A few months ago, European news was disrupted by the approval of a new law entitled «menstrual leave». On 16 February 2023, Spain was the first European country to pass a law offering women the opportunity to take a leave during their menstruation period. Although menstrual leave seems to be unknown in our countries, it should be known that this practice has existed for many years in several countries of the world.

In a world where gender inequalities persist, it is quite understandable to wonder about the possible repercussions of this practice, which to date remains non-existent in Belgium. Indeed, even if such news can be perceived as an extraordinary advance for women, this law raises a lot of reactions and interpellations. On the list, we can find questions such as: does this increase the risk of discrimination against women when hiring? Does this reinforce this prejudice, still too often used, saying that women are weaker than men? Are women more expensive when they work less? Are they productive or profitable enough to be hired?

During your reading, you will discover that this thesis is divided into three distinct axes: the literary review, the methodology and the empirical framework.

The literary review aims to learn more about what menstrual leave is. For this, we will start by defining the concept of menstrual leave and menstruation. Then, we will address the different prejudices, inequalities and discriminations that persist in the world of work towards women. We will pay particular attention to the stigmatization that is done around menstruation and menstrual leave itself. At the end of this literary review, we will establish the list of countries offering the right to menstrual leave in order to discover the differences in terms of application of the law.

The methodology is present to explain the approach used for our survey. This is a fairly short and brief part, which is simply to list our assumptions, define the sample and see what indicators would be likely to bias our survey.

Then, we will reach the part concerning the empirical framework. In this part, we will fully analyze the results of our quantitative survey. After that, we will discuss the results of the survey by comparing them with the assumptions that were made beforehand.

Finally, we will close this thesis with the conclusion. It will resume the key elements discovered throughout the writing of this thesis.