The Conversation: Free menstrual products matter to support equity, but so do adequate facilities and sinks
As written in The Conversation by Adele Perry, Director at Centre for Human Rights Research, Distinguished Professor, History and Women’s and Gender Studies, and senior fellow at St John’s college.
Over the past years, activists have made important gains in the effort to provide people who menstruate with adequate and free supplies.
In Canada, all washrooms in federally regulated workplaces must have period supplies. In Manitoba, period supplies are offered to students in all public schools in a three-year initiative through a corporate partnership and charitable donation.
Further from home, Scotland became the first country to make period products free to all in 2020, and more recently, to our south, Minnesota’s initiative to make menstrual products free in schools has made headlines.
Yet, despite these advances, menstruation continues to shape lives in negative ways and diminish opportunities for many of those who experience it. Providing free supplies in some places — while necessary in the movement towards equity — is only part of the story.
Shifting the conversation from period poverty to menstrual justice is an important step. Menstrual justice is about ensuring that all people who menstruate be provided with the resources and infrastructure to do so safely and with dignity.
To read more of Adele Perry’s article, visit The Conversation.