Tackling period poverty in social housing
According to Bloody Good Period, the average lifetime cost of having a period is £4,800. For many people struggling to get by, this is £4,800 too much. A recent study showed by Plan International that 1 in 10 girls in the UK can’t afford to buy period products and as a result are missing a total of 137,700 school days a year.
‘My mother was a single parent. We had to prioritize money on things like food, heating and clothing so sanitary products came lowed down on the list’.
This isn’t a rarity, there are many people in similar situations around the UK who have to chose between putting food on the table, getting a bus to work or buying period products. There have been reports of people using newspapers, old socks and even plastic bags to manage their period.
Periods and the menstrual cycle is still a taboo subject that people find difficult to talk about. The stigma associated with periods is a result of education and the media portraying it as something to be ashamed of. A report by Action Aid (2018), stated that 52% of women in the UK hide period products because of embarrassment.
‘In this country, we display feelings of shame by hiding tampons up sleeves when going to the bathroom’ (Dr Shirin Lakhani, 2020).
Over the last few years, the media and government have shone a light on the effects of period poverty for those in school. In 2018, Welsh government announced £3.3 million for school pupils to access period products. The end of the tampon tax also saw period products become free of tax under new government rules. There are lots of campaigns happening across the UK and globally trying to ensure that people have access to products that are an essential human right. The likes of Bloody Good Period, Wings Cymru, STOPP and Hey Girls are all doing their bit to tackle period poverty. Scotland has even pledged to provide free period products for anyone who needs them.
With all these great initiatives in place, it makes you question why period poverty is still happening and why some of these solutions aren’t working as you’d expect. We think shame, stigma, accessibility, affordability and education all have a role to play in causing someone to experience period poverty.
We’ve been trailing a Free Period Scheme for Hafod’s housing customers in Cardiff. The experimental approach means we can try out some different ways of distributing period products, whilst also understanding more about the types of people who might be affected. We’ve been making small changes, to simple language changes and how we advertise the scheme to see what works best. Whilst the scheme has been running, we’ve been trying to learn as much as we can about period poverty, we launched a Wales wide survey at the start of the year and had an overwhelming response.
We hope our findings will help feed the conversation surrounding period poverty in Wales and prove the need for a similar Welsh scheme, to the amazing efforts in Scotland.
References
https://www.bloodygoodperiod.com/post/periods-and-pandemics
https://plan-uk.org/file/plan-uk-break-the-barriers-report-032018pdf/download?token=Fs-HYP3v
https://www.actionaid.org.uk/latest-news/more-one-three-uk-women-face-period-stigma
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/ending-period-poverty/91253/
