“Ouch, stop!”
“It hurts so much!”
“It’s annoying!”
“It’s a special pain.”
“It’s really painful!”
These reactions are those of male parliamentarians who, for just a few minutes, felt, thanks to a simulator, a tiny part of the inconvenience caused by painful periods.
Carried out at the initiative of ecological deputies Sébastien Peytavie and Marie-Charlotte Garin, this filmed test aimed to convince their colleagues of the need to adopt the proposed law aimed at establishing menstrual leave of 13 days of sick leave per year, without deficiency.
To discover
Exclusive visit to Art Paris: reserve your place
Download the Le Figaro Cuisine app for tasty and authentic recipes
“Working with that is difficult”
In the video published on March 22 on the Instagram accounts of Sébastien Peytavie and Marie-Charlotte Garin, the parliamentarians are instructed to read a short text.
Problem is, they are regularly interrupted by pain similar to “electric shocks”, which takes their breath away.
Under these conditions, MoDem MP Erwan Balanant quickly admits that “it is obviously extremely difficult to concentrate at certain times.
It’s very boring.”
A point of view shared by Stéphane Vojetta, Renaissance MP: “Working with that, at the moment, is difficult,” he notes.
“You feel like you’re being stabbed.”
While the bill is being debated this March 27 in the National Assembly, MP LR Maxime Minot is pleased to have taken part in the initiative.
“It allows us to better put ourselves in women’s shoes,” he admits.
And to exclaim: “No, but it’s actually horrible.
You feel like you're having little stabs."
For Nupes MP Louis Boyard, who was rather smiling at the start of the experience, it was “impossible to imagine the pain.
When testing this simulator, I didn’t think it was to this extent,” he confesses, with a serious expression.
In France, 15 million people between the ages of 13 and 50 menstruate.
Among them, 10% are affected by endometriosis, a complex disease resulting, among other things, in pain during periods and sexual intercourse.
Furthermore, one in two women suffer from painful periods, whether or not they are linked to a pathology.