Period Poverty

“When we make periods something everyone is learning about, we are doing our part to uproot this stigma. ”

Every month, 500 million women and girls suffer from period poverty globally. This impacts every aspect of their lives. Period poverty is an inability to secure the necessary products to maintain menstrual health. This encompasses both micro and macro challenges to accessing sanitation and menstrual products. 

There are a plethora of challenges to maintaining menstrual health, especially in nations already struggling to provide basic access to public health and sanitation. The UN has investigated many individual countries, but period poverty remains a global challenge to gender equality and sustainable development. 

Financial barriers like the luxury taxes that remain pervasive in the West force many lower-income families to make hard choices between providing for the women in their lives and meeting more general needs. Globally, around one in ten women and girls cannot afford the products they need. This leads to improvisation, which puts them at risk of the many complications that come with improper menstrual health. 

UNICEF reports that 2.1 billion people cannot effectively access sanitation. This extends beyond homes into schools and other public institutions and businesses. In the global south, where so many governments already struggle to provide public sanitation services, women and girls are disproportionately impacted. 

Moreover, this inability to access the resources needed for good menstrual hygiene can lead to several different health complications. If you grew up in the Americas, you have already been scared straight about toxic shock, but many of us have the means to escape it. Even scarier, being unable to access proper period care can lead to reproductive tract infections, Hepatitis B, and an increased risk of getting cervical cancer, making period poverty a global health crisis.  

But period poverty is about much more than just public health. In many parts of the world, young girls are forced out of their school routines to brave their monthly cycle at home. If we assume that every one of these girls bleeds for just three days a month in a ten-month school year, she will miss a month of class just because she is menstruating, setting her back for reasons entirely beyond her control.

These are the kinds of statistics and facts that confronted Nadya Okamoto when she was just starting as a period activist at 16. She says,” At the time, 40 states in the US had the “tampon tax” — a sales tax on period products considering them luxury goods.” It was at that time she knew she had to do something more. 

When I spoke to her, Nadya had this to say about the founding of her non-profit PERIOD; 

“I was inspired to learn more about menstrual inequity and period poverty after collecting an anthology of stories of their using toilet paper, socks, brown paper grocery bags, cardboard, and more, to take care of something so natural. Learning about the tampon tax, which I had not known about before age 16, was absolutely a big driver for me wanting to [start PERIOD].” 

Today, PERIOD is an international movement, addressing period poverty in dozens of communities all over the world. The organization has three pillars - education, advocacy, and service. It has democratized what it means to be involved in the fight against period poverty. Offering logistical and (more recently) financial support to activists pushing for progress in their hometowns. 

Nadya is no longer involved with the organization. She replaced herself as Executive Director earlier this year in January 2020, but she is continuing her period advocacy. She continues to announce new projects and create greater awareness. In fact, her latest venture was announced just last week. 

In 2018, Nadya released her book PERIOD POWER. When asked why she wrote the book, she said:

“I wrote PERIOD POWER as a way to spark more conversations about periods, and try to create a resource hub for any reader to find more information about periods and period-health, and learn more about the fight against period poverty and period stigma.”

It certainly has done just that. Thousands of people have awoken to the many challenges facing women and young girls, and it has undoubtedly been the catalyst for their activism. 

When I spoke with Nadya, I wanted to know what she saw as the causes of this unique form of poverty. She said, “Lack of access, research, and education are all components that play a role in period poverty. Period stigma is also a huge factor — because our society doesn't currently consider period products a necessity. The tampon tax and the inaccessibility of period products is further proof that our society views them as luxuries. This is a human issue, and it affects us all.” 

When we look around the world, men continue to dominate in political spheres creating even more challenges to change in this realm of activism. As of October 2020, women make up just 25% of the world’s parliaments. Men and boys continue to be uneducated on the realities of periods and the challenges women are facing. The stigma our societies perpetuate stops even our politicians and lawmakers from learning more about these issues. 

As millions of women and girls suffer through dangerously unhygienic periods and lead childhoods marred by a severe lack of education, one of the most significant challenges to uprooting this issue is the overwhelming lack of information on the problems facing the women and girls that matter. 

Education is essential, but the loftier task is normalization. As a society, we need to be challenging ourselves to learn more about periods and period poverty. Talk more openly about your struggles with the people around you, talk with your representatives about it. Bring these issues to the forefront of the political landscape you live in and your social circles. When we make periods something everyone is learning about, we are doing our part to uproot this stigma. 

There is so much more to be done at every level to tackle the issue. One of the crucial areas that need to be revolutionized is the corporate sector that profits arbitrarily from the people who menstruate who need the products they make and charge ridiculous prices. Activism needs to move from being just non-profit work and into the spaces, our oppressors are occupying-business. Nadya too feels that this is a big challenge to overcoming period poverty, saying when asked: 

“I think that the nonprofit industrial complex is something that we need to deconstruct as it is still very much perpetuating inequity around the world. I absolutely think that business, specifically hybrid models and social enterprises that we’re seeing arise, have incredible potential to make a difference. Something that was very frustrating for me while working in the nonprofit sector was that I felt like I had to go fundraise before actually doing the work, and, at a certain point, I found that all my time was being spent fundraising. The beauty of a business is that if you create a successful model, there will be a point where the business is naturally generating revenue, and you’ll be able to dedicate more of your time to specifically making an impact versus raising money.” 

Undoubtedly, the sustainability of both a movement and a non-profit is imperative to progress. And as we go forward in a fight that is so fundamental to so many people, those activists that are working hard to fix the problem must be doing so with everything they have. Nadya has been working in collaboration with her friend Nick Jain to start August. A company that wants to undo the stigma remains a challenge to achieving menstrual equality for all people who menstruate. They are currently focused on building a community that is working towards ending the stigma surrounding periods. In Spring, they will be releasing their very own line of period products. 

As period poverty continues to be a challenge to women’s rights, development, and public health, there is hope that more people like Nadya are paying attention and putting in the work to understand its causes and deal with its impacts. There is so much to be done to combat this growing issue in every single country. I encourage you to get involved, get reading, and get educated. Every single voice counts because, for all the change that needs to be made, nothing will happen if we are silent. 

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Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley