Menstrual Policy as a Compass: Reorientating Workers with Endometriosis

Victoria Williams, Joanna Brewis, Vincenza Priola, Sang K
In: Women's Reproductive Health · 2026 · pp. 1–20 · doi:10.1080/23293691.2026.2740633 · W7214416569
Qualitative OA: hybrid CC0
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This study explores how menstrual policy serves as a reorientation tool for 21 UK workers with endometriosis, helping organizations shift away from inflexible norms to accommodate diverse bodily needs and reduce exclusion.

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Abstract

Endometriosis can profoundly shape working lives and career trajectories. Through in-depth interviews and diaries, we explore how 21 women working with endometriosis navigate work and career across different UK employment sectors. Drawing on Ahmed’s concepts of orientations and objects, this study suggests that organizations compel individuals to turn away from bodily needs to face normative temporalities, producing feelings of disorientation and exclusion. Menstrual policy is positioned as a critical tool of reorientation, a means of shifting organizational direction so that bodies are not required to bend toward inflexible norms but rather workplaces turn toward the realities of diverse embodiments.

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Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

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last seen: 2026-11-12T06:04:30.297530+00:00
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