Supporting Her Together

Menstrual and fertility health issues can have a huge impact on our lives – impacting physical and mental wellbeing, family and social life, relationships, education, and our experiences at work. These issues can include menopause; period problems (including PMS, dysmenorrhea and heavy periods); long-term conditions like endometriosis, adenomyosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, vaginal lesions and cysts; fertility issues; and anxiety or depression caused by one or more of these factors.

Surveys of our membership suggest that around 64% of those experiencing menstrual and fertility health problems have noted a direct impact on their working life, with many needing to take extended periods of sickness leave and others feeling that their menstrual health problems were having a negative effect on their career progression and opportunities.

Equally worrying is the fact that so many of us feel uncomfortable talking about menstruation, menstrual and fertility health with our employers, or even with our colleagues, due to the sense of stigma that still persists.

All of this means that menstrual and fertility health is not just a workplace issue – it’s a trade union issue.

Through our campaign, we’re encouraging better conversations around menstrual and fertility health at work, making it easier for people to reach out for help, and ensuring that employers and managers know how to properly support employees with symptoms relating to their menstrual and fertility health. We want to equip our members, reps and their employers with the training, information and resources they need to make conversations about menstrual and fertility health easy and accessible.

We’ll be asking to workplaces to formally adopt our dedicated Women’s Reproductive Health Charter, and to provide free period products to employees. And we’ll be lobbying government to do its part to ensure that we create an economy and a society which is more understanding and adaptive to menstrual and fertility health needs.

How you can get involved

• Sign up to our campaign and receive our Supporting Her Together resource pack to get the word out in your workplace.
• Speak to your workplace or organisation and ask them to sign up to our Women’s Reproductive Health Charter. We’d be more than happy to speak to your employer, or even come in if you would like us to.

If you need help now, get in touch with us for a confidential conversation and advice. If you’d like to speak to a female advisor, please ask when we answer the phone – we will not be offended!