Let's make period poverty history
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Loading... - Alice Winston
- 27 Aug 2021
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“I wrapped a sock around my underwear just to stop the bleeding, because I didn’t want to get shouted at. And I wrapped a whole tissue roll around my underwear, just to keep my underwear dry until I got home. I once Sellotaped tissue to my underwear. I didn’t know what else to do.”
This was the quote, from a schoolgirl in Leeds, that stunned me into realising that young women in the UK were experiencing the trauma of period poverty. All women have faced the mess of an unexpectedly early period, but the idea that, for some, this was the bloody reality of every day of every period was profoundly upsetting; and galvanising.
I began donating period products to my local food bank and then, keen to have a greater impact, I became involved as a volunteer coordinator for the Red Box Project, whose aim is to ensure that no young woman goes without access to menstrual protection. The project uses donations from local communities to provide red boxes filled with period products and spare underwear to more than 750 schools across the UK and, before the holidays, this number was increasing by more than 100 each month.
Period poverty is prevalent. The latest research from children’s charity Plan International UK reports that one in 10 young women (aged 14-21) have been unable to afford period products. In London, this number is closer to one in seven. Despite these statistics, and these miserable personal testaments, I have often been challenged on the need for our project. Most objections relate to cost; as it was put to me on a recent broadcast of the BBC’s Sunday Politics London show: “Surely families can afford [a box of tampons for a pound or two]?”. And it is true that some products are available cheaply. However, it is also true that not all products are suitable or accessible to everyone. Moreover, for many families, even the cheapest of products can be an expense too far. In Hackney, where I live and volunteer, more than 40% of children live in poverty. Food bank dependency increased by 24% last year. It is quite simple, really: if you can’t afford food, you can’t afford menstrual products.
And poverty is just one issue that may affect a person’s access to period products. There are myriad social and cultural reasons why products might not be available at home, many of which are linked with the stifling stigma that persists around menstruation. At the Red Box Project, we don’t ask why people need to use our boxes; we believe everyone deserves equal access to period products, whatever their situation.
In Scotland, vital steps are being taken to address these issues. In addition to its current pilot scheme to offer access to free period products to low-income families, the Scottish government announced last week it was becoming the first national government ever to provide free access to products in all schools, colleges and universities.
Progress is also being made in Wales, where the government allocated £1m earlier this year to address period poverty in communities and improve facilities in schools.
In England, we are being left behind. Yes, £1.5m from the “tampon tax fund”was pledged to the Brook project to address period poverty in England. But I cannot celebrate an allocation of pre-committed funds (raised from the injustice of VAT on menstrual products) to enable a charity simply to carry out its work. The government has said that period poverty is an issue for schools to tackle themselves, but at most schools I have visited to deliver red boxes, I have met staff who have been buying pupils period products with their own money. The responsibility to ensure that everyone can participate in their education lies with the government, not individual schools or teachers. The right to an education is a fundamental human right, which should be unencumbered by biology.
Almost 40 years have passed since Gloria Steinem contemplated what the world would look like if men menstruated. I’m willing to bet we wouldn’t be having this conversation if they did. Because period poverty is not simply another facet of poverty: it is a reflection of a society ridden with gendered inequalities. And it is an insidious issue. It disenfranchises and disempowers, affecting access to education and to opportunity. So I call for our government to fund free, universal access to menstrual products, in schools and in our wider communities. Because, as it stands, its inaction on period poverty is a bloody disgrace.
