A tweet by journalist Barkha Dutt about food aggregator Zomato has led to a significant number of Twitter users debating on a topic that ideally should have been settled a long time ago — period leaves for women.
Dutt, one of the most visible women journalists in India and someone who has broken some glass ceilings herself, has a strangely regressive position on Zomato’s recent decision to grant 10 period leaves to women in a year: her view was that it would “ghettoize” women and take away even more opportunities from them.
The tweet led to some strong reactions, with hundreds of women disagreeing with her and listing their reasons.
HuffPost India’s Piyasree Dasgupta has outlined her views on the debate here, arguing that the blame for women missing out on economic opportunities should be directed at some men, not our bodies.
READ: Periods Won’t Stop Women From ‘Flying Fighter Jets’, Some Men Will
While most Twitter debates wither away after a few hours, this one is still going strong. Here’s what they have been saying.
Some people were very impatient, because they had had it:
Some made very pertinent points about how the entire debate showed that it was still a man’s world
Some had a real issue that people with no uterus had opinions on periods.
There were puns too.
There were some excellent threads breaking it down for those who do not understand why this is necessary.