At the age of 9, Mahoro Amani had her first period. At home, their mothers talk openly about everything they need to know. But, their mother told them, never mention this in school.
“I was basically told to keep it a secret,” said Amani, now 15 and a 10th grader at Miami Arts Charter High School in Florida. They say the school does not teach students about menstruation or provide menstrual products to students in the restroom.
“I’m really worried about how many kids have panic attacks or cry in the bathroom because they don’t have pads and none of their friends have pads on them,” Amani said.
Amani is the school’s student council president, and they are working with others on the council to get free menstrual products in the school restrooms. However, administrators said they have no plans to use school funds to do so.
Florida is one of many states that don’t require schools to provide menstrual products, and a growing number of organizations, activists, and students like Amani are trying to change that.
Dozens of states are reviewing equity laws periodically
This year, the bills related to equity period have introduced in 37 states, according to Women’s Voices For The Earth, a nonprofit advocacy group. But as of this fall, only five states have required schools to provide menstrual products. Last month, California Be the latest to do so, asking public schools and colleges to stock their restrooms with tampons, tampons, and other products free of charge.
In Michigan, the city of Ann Arbor recently passed legislation to provide all public toilets with menstrual products.
In Florida, the law requires free products in school restrooms was introduced twice, but have not yet passed.
Recent studies have shown that about a quarter of students menstruate struggles with access to menstrual support products and many adolescents still feel stigmatized about menstruation.
“The country has come to expect schools to provide toilet paper and soap,” said Damaris Pereda, country program director for PERIOD, a nonprofit advocacy group. Why shouldn’t menstruating students have access to the same basic supplies, she asks? “So that if something happens, they just go to the bathroom to get their stuff and go on with their lives.”
Access to period products that impact learning loss
Currently, many schools keep menstrual products in the school nurse’s office.
At those schools, “while you might get a recurring product, you often have to walk across campus while still bleeding,” Pereda said. “What happens in that case is that a lot of the students feel embarrassed and as if they’ve lost some of their dignity.”
Currently, there is little national data on adolescents’ access to menstrual products. But there is little information showing that the lack of access is worse for poor students. Only public research Monitoring the impact of period poverty among U.S. teen students, funded by PERIOD, found that 23 percent of students struggled to purchase period products.
California addressed this lack of access in 2017 by asking schools in low-income counties to provide free period products in schools. Laws passed in October expanded access to all schools and required products to be placed in half of a school’s bathroom.
“It becomes a barrier to education,” said Christina Garcia, the Democratic congresswoman who introduced the bill signed by Governor Gavin Newsom (D) in October. “These are our most vulnerable kids, they’ve got a lot of barriers. This shouldn’t be one of them.”
Nicky Dawkins, who runs PERIOD’s Miami chapter, hopes the recent victory in the California legislature will help mobilize educators, students, and health professionals across Florida.
“We don’t want to continue to support this issue,” said Dawkins. “We want to solve the problem, done through the passage of bills.”
Research also shows that 70% of students feel that the school environment makes them feel self-conscious about their periods.
At Miami Arts, Amani feels like discrimination can be seen everywhere. They told NPR there was no nurse that students could go to when they needed menstrual support or had questions about their period.
“There are people who think they are dying because they start bleeding,” Amani said. “They’re confused and don’t know what to do, and if schools were more open about menstruation, we could reduce the stigma.”
Alfredo de la Rosa, founder and principal of the Miami Arts Charter, told NPR that while the school does not employ nurses, students can go to the administrator’s office if they need business products. “A female vice-principal (or commissioner in her absence) is assigned to provide menstrual products to any young woman who requests them,” he said in an email.
Activists consider period products a medical necessity
Advocates say the problem goes beyond stigma, but also affects the quality of education. The PERIOD study found that 4 out of 5 menstruating teens said they missed class, or know someone who missed class because they didn’t have access to period products.
Pereda says this dropout often occurs when students need to go home because they can’t find the products they need: “Then they don’t want to go back to school, or if they do, they lose that time, all because they don’t have access to period productions at school.”
Like Amani, Margaret Schedler approached her school about stocking up on antique bathroom products. She is a 12th grader at The Altamont, a private college preparatory school in Birmingham, Ala. Schedler said the board was receptive to the idea and agreed to her plan by having her school’s club raise money for the project. The school supplies and pays for menstrual products to students at the front desk and nurse’s office.
Now, Schedler’s club, Ladies of Lavender, relies on student donations to provide menstrual products in Altamont’s restrooms. Although the club receives a lot of donations, Schedler says it still feels unfair that students should be held accountable, especially since they have to organize monthly fundraisers and students often complain that they have donated supplies in the past.
“Schools should realize that [menstruation] “Schedler Arguments”. And if they want to support menstruating citizens, they should do the bare minimum and make sure that public and state-sponsored places have period products for everyone. can use. “
Cost is often considered a factor when considering providing broad access to these products. Free up tampons, an advocacy group focused on obtaining period products in the state budget, estimates that the cost $5-7 per year per student to provide period products. Advocates working with the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services are estimating the cost of a recent law requiring schools to provide periodic products to students in public schools at about $750,000 per year. .
Advocates say the cost benefits students. A pilot program in New York City found that attendance increased by 2.4% among girls at a municipal high school after having tampons and pads ready in the school restroom.
Others argue that the question of cost crosses a larger point.
“Menstrual products should be handled the same way you handle toilet paper,” says Michele Anzabi, one of the chairpersons of the PERIOD chapter at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s a medical necessity and so it shouldn’t be hindered by conversations about cost, but seen as something that needs to be addressed.”
Mansee Khurana
