Period pain presenteeism: investigating associations of working while experiencing dysmenorrhea

Abstract

Although menstrual pain (dysmenorrhea) is common and can have detrimental effects on work and social functioning, little is known about how people manage it in their professional life. Existing evidence indicates that people with dysmenorrhea often engage in presenteeism, meaning they work despite experiencing symptoms and report perceptions of social stigma around menstruation. In this study, we investigated individual health-related factors, psychosocial factors, and work factors associated with period pain presenteeism in a cross-sectional survey study including N = 668 employed people with experiences of dysmenorrhea. Our results show that symptom severity, disclosure of menstrual pain to the leader, and remote work are directly associated with period pain presenteeism. We further found that the presence of medical diagnosis moderates the association between symptom severity and presenteeism. Disclosure to the leader was associated with leader gender, leader-member exchange (LMX), and the absence of a medical diagnosis, indicating a potential mediating effect. We did not, however, find the perceptions of public beliefs regarding the concealment of menstruation to be related to presenteeism or disclosure. Our findings have important implications for research on menstrual health and occupational health management practice.

Keywords:

• Menstruation
• pain
• presenteeism
• illness disclosure
• gender diversity

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Hodar Lam for his helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We would like to thank the Endometriose-Vereinigung Deutschland e.V., and Endometriose Stichting for promoting our call for participants on social media.

Ethical approval

The study documents and design were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Review Board of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Amsterdam (Project Nr. 2022-WOP-14738). The study conforms to the standards of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Consent form

Informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to their participation.

Disclosure statement

The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/5j6h8/?view_only=034fda59add448278154dd14eeb106ac (anonymous view-only link for peer-review – will be made publicly accessible after publication).

Notes

1 Questionnaires for which there were no published or author-provided translations were translated by native speakers using a two-step procedure including translation, back-translation, and comparison.

2 One participant using the in the “other” category and answering “woman and queer” was categorized as female in the further analyses.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received for this research.