By Liva Polack
Abdominal Vascular Compression Syndrome occurs when abdominal blood vessels are compressed by surrounding structures or when abdominal organs are compressed by nearby blood vessels. Photo: 123RF
Painful cramps and other period symptoms could be costing the economy more than $4 billion a year, a health economics professor estimates.
That is based on a calculation by Auckland University's Paula Lorgelly, derived from a new Australian study which found that period symptoms influencing work efficiency could lose that country AU$14 billion annually.
Researchers from Western Sydney University surveyed more than 1700 women.
They used the data to estimate the efficiency loss both from absenteeism (women having to stay home from work) and presenteeism (women being at work but not being able to be productive because of period pain or other period symptoms).
It showed the need to "provide workplace policies or health interventions to allow women to be their most productive selves", Lorgelly said.
Debilitating pain not taken seriously
Thirty-year old music teacher Georgia was hospitalised because her period pain was so intense she was throwing up.
Several days a cycle she had to stay home because of the pain.
What she wanted the most from her employer was understanding, she said.
"I feel like, if I said 'Hey I have my period, and I can't come in to work' it would not be taken seriously.
"When you take a day off it creates more work. Sometimes it is just easier to be at work in pain and not quite at 100 percent."
She described being in the middle of teaching 12-year-olds how to play instruments when she could feel blood seeping through her pants.
She decided to leave the class. Luckily, a teacher aide could stay while she changed in the bathroom.
Georgia said she always carried pads, extra underwear and pants for such situations. She suffered from heavy periods and severe period pain, but often tried to soldier through, she said.
'I do not need to know that'
Ruby, a 24-year-old building apprentice, was prescribed painkillers but they didn't work - she was still expected to be at work every single day. Photo: 123RF
Ruby, a 24-year-old building apprentice, could feel the period cramps in her lower abdomen.
It was a hot day and there was a tonne of dirt that had to be shovelled. It took two-and-a-half hours.
She spoke to her site manager and started crying because the pain was too much. She said he told her there was no reason to cry, but allowed her to go home.
Her period pain started to worsen, and every cycle she had to call in sick once or twice. After three months HR said it could not go on like that and asked her to see a doctor.
The doctor prescribed painkillers but they did not really work, Ruby said.
"I was expected to come in every single day even if I was having quite a tough period. There were definitely times where I would be curling over in pain, but I just had to go to work."
While Ruby understood that her former workplace valued efficiency, she wished they had met her with more understanding.
Another incident had stayed with her. After being absent from work because of her period, a manager asked where she had been.
"I said I had my period, and he was just like 'Ew you can't say that, I do not need to know that'. It definitely made me feel like, women in a male dominated workplace can't even be a woman."
Women are huge asset - union
Employees like Ruby should be met with understanding and trust when they raised a health issue, New Zealand Council of Trade Unions vice president Rachel Mackintosh said.
"Work benefits from diversity, and if you are simply going to narrowly measure time that people take off because they have whatever periods pains, then I just think you miss the whole picture and it makes it look like women are a burden, where as in fact women are a huge asset in the workplace."
She pointed to the fact that New Zealanders already had the right to flexible work hours, but said there were several measures employers and the government could take to help women and productivity.
"Allow leave for people who need it during periods, provide free period products and allow flexible work according to the law. And the government can also fund the kind of education to improve work culture."
Lorgelly said earlier research suggested up to 90 percent of women experienced presenteeism, and powering through at work was more common than taking time off.
The study from Western Sydney University was not peer-reviewed yet, but used the common research method for estimating the societal burden of a health challenge, called cost-of-illness.