WHAT IS PERIOD POVERTY?
Period poverty is a global social injustice affecting people who cannot access period products, whether for financial reasons or otherwise.
On any one day, over 800m people across the globe are on their period. Of these, 500m lack access to adequate resources to care for their period and manage their menstruation with informed choice.
In 2017, a survey by Plan International UK reported that 1 in 10 girls had been unable to afford period products; 1 in 7 had to ask to borrow products from a friend due to affordability issues; and 1 in 10 had to improvise. Research has found that some use newspaper, old clothes and toilet paper as alternatives. It is estimated that over 137,000 children across the UK have missed school days due to period poverty.
68% said they felt less able to pay attention in class at school or college while menstruating.
40% of girls in the UK have used toilet roll because they couldn’t afford menstrual products.
Who is affected?
Any girl, woman, trans man and non-binary person who menstruates can be affected by period poverty.
And period poverty is a facet of financial poverty. We cannot escape from its gendered nature. Women are disproportionately more likely to experience poverty because of entrenched and endemic structural inequality.
For example, a study by NEU revealed that more than one fifth of women (22%) have a persistently low income compared to approximately 14% of men.
Women face additional poverty risks as a result of lower earning power, caring responsibilities and the changing family structure. When women face a daily struggle to afford their most basic needs, they are not able to build up financial savings nor assets to fall back on in times of hardship.
Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) are even further disadvantaged due to structural racism, with women in these groups experiencing considerably higher rates of poverty than white women in the U.K. This is owing to a myriad of factors, such as lower pay, higher raters of unemployment and economic inactivity, likelihood of being a single parent, or having a large family.
What is the impact?
A survey of more than 1,000 girls in the UK found nearly half were embarrassed by their period and many were afraid to ask for help because of the stigma.
Almost half of British girls have said they have witnessed their peers being bullied or shamed about their periods.
The stigma surrounding periods has been shown to directly affect a girl’s potential to succeed. If a girl misses school every time she has her period, she is set 145 days behind her fellow male students.
We need to normalise the conversation surrounding periods, and end the silence that is entrenched. A quarter of the population menstruates at any given time, so why are we too embarrassed to talk about this normal and natural biological phenomenon?
Period poverty is a facet of menstrual inequity – something that exists across the globe.
The United Nations has noted that up to 30% of Afghan and Nepalese girls miss school every month during their period, while in India around 20% drop out of education entirely after their period begins.
In countries such a Nepal, girls are forced to sleep outside in ‘period huts’ in a practice known as Chhaupadi. Although it’s banned, it’s a practice that persists. Many girls and women have died from cold, smoke inhalation, or snake bites.
In Sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia, child marriage would decrease by over 60% if all girls had secondary education
Young girls who do not receive an education are more likely to enter child marriages and experience an early pregnancy, malnourishment, domestic violence, and pregnancy complications as a result. The failure to support women to care for their periods and manage their menstrual cycle is a loss for society at large.