Break the Barriers Report Released
- By Catriona Dickie
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- 29 Mar, 2018
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PLAN international have released their latest report, 'Break the Barriers: Girls’ Experiences of Menstruation in the UK'. The report, written and conducted by No More Taboo founder and director Chloe Tingle and former director Shailini Vora, shows that girls' health is at risk due to negative self-talk about periods.
The report breaks down attitudes to periods among girls in the UK today. It covers menstrual knowledge and attitudes, the impact of shame and stigma and includes a call for a ‘menstrual manifesto’. We’ve put together some of the key findings from the report below.
What are girls learning about their periods and when?
Education surrounding menstruation takes many forms as it can come from schools, parents or guardians, or friends. The report highlights the misinformation and gaps in the knowledge of young people, with one in four young girls admitting they felt unprepared for the start of their period and one in seven revealing they didn’t know what was happening. When they described the start of their menstruation, words and phrases were used like: “scared”, “horrible”, “slap in the face”, “I had no idea”, “no clue what was happening”, “I thought I was going to die”, “shock”, “embarrassed”, “unprepared”.
Who are girls and other young people to about menstruation?
Most of the girls interviewed cited their mothers, sisters and female relatives as their sources of information during their periods. Many girls said that they avoid talking to men about menstruation. Charlotte, 10, said: “I don’t know if I can talk to my male friends, I think they’d laugh – they don’t know about it so I’m worried they would laugh. They would feel really awkward and I wouldn’t want to put my friends through that.”
Positively fighting shame and stigma.
With 48% of young people still feeling embarrassed about their period, we still have a long way to go in fighting the stigma surrounding menstruation. The report found that boys were accepting of the fact that their knowledge was flawed in regard to menstruation, but were willing to learn more to become more supportive of their female peers. Paul, 15, said: “We know enough to know how it is and how it affects girls, and in some ways help out when we can.” Others acknowledged that although they would prefer not to see blood, there was no reason to stigmatise girls for menstruating.
A note on period poverty.
Many of the girls interviewed mentioned the affordability of menstrual products, with one in seven girls sharing that they have struggled to afford sanitary wear. Emma Murray from North West Bristol Foodbank is concerned that taboos surrounding menstruation are holding women back from asking about sanitary products in foodbanks due to embarrassment. She said
“People have asked us for toilet rolls and sanitary towels, especially if they have three or four girls in their family, because that is a big expense and they have real difficulty trying to deal with that on top of the cost of food.”
You can read the report in full here. If this has inspired you to support women facing period poverty in the UK today, check out our store here.
WOW Women of the World festivals have been popping up across the world, if you get the chance to go along to one we would strongly recommend it.
WOW – Women of the World festival celebrates women and girls, and looks at the obstacles that stop them from achieving their potential.
Around the world, individuals and communities are insisting on the simple proposition that women and girls must have equal rights and asking the question: why is gender equality taking so long?
Southbank Centre's WOW – Women of the World festival is a global network of festivals which provides a platform for celebrating what has been achieved, and exploring all the ways we can change the world for the better.
What’s not to love?
Our Founder, Chloe, and her Mum Angela went along to represent No More Taboo with a stall across the two days. Here’s her highlights:
“Although we didn’t get much time to take in all the discussions as we were kept busy wo-manning the stall (thanks Mum for helping out)! We had some great discussions around gender, equality, inclusivity and of course periods with new customers, supporters, other panellists and some old friends who came to see us.
In fact, we were really pleased to catch up with Plan International UK who were opening the festival with a discussion about Period Activism exactly one year on since the launch of our #BreaktheBarriers research and Period Poverty Conference that we ran in collaboration with Plan.
On the first weekend of September, No More Taboo set up shop at Lush Cribbs Causeway for their Charity Pot weekend.
The Lush Charity Pot is a wonderfully creamy shea-butter hand lotion where all the sales money (excluding VAT) goes towards a chosen charity or non-for-profit. This scheme is designed to help boost grass-roots, small and local organisations, like ourselves, financially so that we can continue to do the work we do such as our Tackling Period Poverty programme.
As we were Lush’s chosen organisation for the weekend of the 1-2 September, one of our volunteers, Iloni, and one of our advisors, Carolyn, went along to wo-man the (suitably Lush-styled aesthetic) stall that Lush had kindly provided for us. We took along a range of our products, stacks of leaflets and information as well as our enthusiasm for talking about all things to do with periods.
Over the weekend, we sold over £200’s worth of stock with Ruby Cups and Honour Your Flow re-usable pads proving most popular with Lush customers. On top of this, Lush sold so many of their Charity Pots that £340.60 was raised for No More Taboo – which was amazing!
However exciting the money side of things were with this event, what I personally took away as being the real highlight of the weekend was the number and nature of conversations we shared with customers.
Mothers and daughters came and chatted to us about how they agreed it was so important to use re-usable products for personal and financial reasons as well as for the planet’s sake. Boyfriends accompanied their other halves as they prodded and probed the range of menstrual cups on display. Older women commented on how it’s such a relief to be able to talk about menstruation in public and with people you’ve only just met. They regaled of a time when periods were even more hush-hush and celebrated with us out mission of there being No More Taboo.
We would like to thank Lush Cribbs Causeway for being such wonderful hosts, encouraging every customer that came through their doors to consider buying the Charity Pot or simply to chat with us. Each member of their staff team was incredibly warm and so keen to find out more about what we do. On behalf of all of us at No More Taboo, thank you.
For more information, take a look at their website: https://www1.uwe.ac.uk/whatson/biggreenweek.aspx
Read more here: https://www.wen.org.uk/environmenstrual-week-of-action/
