MEN RUN ON A CLOCK. WOMEN RUN ON SEASONS. IT'S TIME EMPLOYERS CAUGHT UP.
- Guest Writer
- 24 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Women don't run on a 24-hour clock like men; they run on a 28-day one, writes Robyn Llewellyn, author of Flow Well Be Well: A Simple Guide to Harmonising Your Cycle and Nervous System.
This is what I think we need to be telling our workplaces. Men's hormones move through a roughly 24-hour cycle, predictable, steady, same again tomorrow.
Women move through four distinct hormonal phases across the month, each one asking something different of the body. Different energy. Different needs. Different capacity.
Less a clock, more a set of seasons, cycling round every month whether we plan for them or not.
And yet the entire structure of modern life, our jobs, our gyms, our calendars, was built for the 24-hour model.
We're expected to show up with identical energy on day three of our cycle as day 23.
So we override. We push through the exhaustion in the luteal phase because the deadline doesn't care. We say yes when the honest answer is a hard no. We train harder, sleep less, and tell ourselves we can rest once we've finished the to-do list and "earned it."
We need the world and workplace to catch up on the reality of our biology.
Recently, I was talking to a friend who is a top executive at a leading period-care company. I asked him: "You know about the different seasons of the female cycle, right?"
He looked at me blankly.
I wasn't surprised. It's a gap that runs deep, even in industries built around women's health.
Men run on a 24-hour clock. Women run on a 28-day one
I explained it to him like this. Men operate on a roughly 24-hour hormonal clock, they're like the sun. Cortisol rises in the morning, melatonin comes in at night.
Consistent, predictable, day in and day out. Women are fundamentally different.
We run on a 28-day cycle, more like the moon. We move through four distinct seasons within our body every month, and each one is asking something different of us, not just physically, but mentally and creatively too.
In the week after her period, a woman's energy tends to build, oestrogen rises, focus sharpens, confidence lifts. Around ovulation, that energy often peaks, she's typically at her most social, most articulate, most switched on.
Then, in the second half of the cycle, energy naturally turns inward as progesterone rises, calling for more rest and reflection rather than output.
And during her period, energy is at its lowest, a natural pause before the cycle begins again. Four completely different internal climates, all within a single month, and almost no workplace built to account for any of it.
Workplaces, almost without exception, are still built around the male model.
His response floored me: "But the women on my team are actually more consistent than the men."
Of course they are. Women are extraordinary. But what I said to him was this: they're almost certainly overriding their biology every single day to show up that way, and there's a cost to that consistency. Stress. PMS. Painful periods. Burnout.
I can speak to this personally, from years in corporate roles, pushing hard regardless of where I was in my cycle, with no framework to understand why some weeks felt effortless and others felt like wading through concrete.
I'm not saying women can't perform. I'm saying performing against our biology has a price.
Women perform constantly and brilliantly. But when we perform against our nature, without acknowledgement and without support, our health eventually pays the price. And so does our long-term productivity.
Some companies are already onto this. Modibodi is leading the way in Australia, offering ten days of paid leave for menstruation, menopause or miscarriage. Japan and Indonesia have had protected menstrual leave since the 1940s. These policies matter.
But what if the bigger shift is actually simpler than policy change? What if it doesn't require extra leave at all?
What if we just planned our work around our cycle, instead of in spite of it?
What if women were simply encouraged to plan their work around their cycle? What if a conversation with your manager about intentionally doing less in one particular week of the month, softening your output, skipping the hard deadline, was not just accepted but normalised?
And equally, what if the weeks of high creative energy and expansiveness were recognised and channelled into the work that benefits most from that state?
Picture what that could actually look like.
A woman schedules her big pitch, her toughest negotiation, her most demanding week of deliverables for the days after her period, when her energy is naturally building toward its peak.
In the days before her period, she blocks out space for admin, planning, or quieter, more reflective work instead of front-loading her calendar with meetings she'll have to push through.
None of this requires a policy overhaul. It requires women having the language to explain what's happening in their bodies, and managers willing to listen when they do.
That's not radical. That's just working with biology instead of against it.
Once you understand what a woman needs at each stage of her cycle, it's genuinely not complicated. It just requires us to start having the conversation.
Imagine a workplace built for how women actually work
I imagine workplaces where women plan their cycle alongside their work calendar. Where they speak openly with their managers about the weeks they'll hustle, and the weeks they'll soften.
Where the full range of feminine energy is seen not as inconsistency, but as an asset.
We are not just small men. We never were. And the sooner our workplaces understand that, the better the outcomes will be for everyone.
Is this a conversation your workplace is ready to have?
Robyn Llewellyn is the author of Flow Well Be Well - A Simple Guide to Harmonising Your Cycle and Nervous System, out now with Hembury Books.
