“Corporate business needed to be re-educated [about] menstruation, reframe its purpose and allow women to be women without any stigma,” says Baxter, who has left Coexist but remains an advisor on Coexist’s period policy.

If open conversation erodes taboos, period leave at least offers one way to get people talking. The challenge is finding a way to implement it that isn’t detrimental to women’s participation in the workforce.

Putting it in practice

How a company does that depends on its size and structure, but there are a few key ingredients. Language is one, says Lara Owen, a consultant on menstruation and menopause in the workplace and a PhD candidate at Monash Business School in Melbourne, Australia.

Menstrual leave is a loaded term, one that may cause people who have never experienced severe cramps to make unfounded assumptions; namely, “that women are going to get free time off for something that isn’t really a problem,” Owen says. Instead of “menstrual leave,” she prefers terminology that conveys accommodations for people managing periods in the office, rather than simply sending them home.