The UK government has announced a new campaign in a bid to end global period poverty by 2030.
In the UK, one in 10 girls are unable to afford sanitary products, according to Plan International UK. And 12 percent of girls have had to improvise s…
Category: Menstruation Stigma
The new period emoji is going to smash stereotypes
Unicode confirmed it’s scheduled to hit keyboards in spring 2019. Read more…More about Mashable Video, Menstruation Stigma, Unicode, New Emoji, and Period Emoji
View More The new period emoji is going to smash stereotypesI wish I’d had this illustrated guide to periods as a teenager
My first period showed up out of the blue like an unwelcome guest that I was highly unprepared for. I didn’t know what I was looking at, what was normal, what was safe to do, or who to talk to.
Most of all, though, I was mortified by the very idea of having blood coming out of my private parts. Could people tell? What if I bled onto my clothes? This embarrassment prevented me from telling literally anyone — even my own mother — for the first few years of my menstruating life. This meant that I didn’t have proper access to period products and had to make do with pads that I pilfered from my mum’s bathroom in the hope she wouldn’t notice. My teenage years were full of makeshift, creative ways of trying (and often failing) to stem the flow of menstrual blood that I was woefully ill-equipped to manage. Read more…
More about Girls, Periods, Menstruation, Menstruation Stigma, and Culture
View More I wish I’d had this illustrated guide to periods as a teenagerWhen will tampon users stop shaming pad users?
For far too long, people who use menstrual pads have been doubly stigmatized: first for their periods, and second, for their feminine hygiene product of choice.
“Why do you want to wear an adult diaper?” tampon loyalists will ask. They are confident …
No girl’s period should force her to miss school, and this startup is making sure of that
Growing up as a young girl in Nigeria, Folasade Bamisaye didn’t have access to sanitary pads or tampons. She would cut off parts of her foam mattress, or use scraps of clothing—sometimes even parts of her school uniform.
Bamisaye’s lack of access to basic menstrual hygiene products didn’t just cut away at her school uniform, it also cut into her school time and prevented her from attending lessons. “I missed a lot of classes, a lot of lectures, and it interfered with my academic performance,” she says.
Twenty years after Bamisaye finished school, Nigerian schoolgirls continue to face the same challenges when they menstruate. So, she decided to do something about it—by creating a startup that provides girls with menstrual hygiene kits in the hope that they’ll stay in school. Read more…
More about Africa, Nigeria, Social Good, Menstruation Stigma, and Social Enterprise
View More No girl’s period should force her to miss school, and this startup is making sure of thatStock images perpetuate the myth that women are weaker when they’re on their period
Hunched over a hot water bottle. Bent over in pain. Curled up in the fetal position. This is how menstruating women are portrayed in 91 percent of stock imagery and image search engine results, according to a new analysis of online period-related content.
Period subscription service Pink Parcel conducted an analysis of period-related content from 100 popular websites, including Google, Bing, and the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) website. The findings — emailed to Mashable — revealed that nine in 10 images depicting menstruation showed women looking “weak, upset, or vulnerable.” Stock image sites, search engines, and health advice sites found to be the worst offending sources. Read more…
More about Social Good, Menstruation, Menstruation Stigma, Period Stigma, and Stock Images
View More Stock images perpetuate the myth that women are weaker when they’re on their period