In addition to toilet paper, hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes, COVID-19 panic purchasing is causing a shortage of pads and tampons. Faced with a shortage of options, here’s an option: Stop your period.
Menstruation and Menstrual Equity
Protect Women on the Front Lines of COVID
With schools, clinics and whole communities shuttered, our programs improving women’s and adolescent health, increasing access to girls’ education and empowerment, and preventing violence against women and girls, too, have largely been forced to pause. What does this mean, when working with populations even more fragile than our own?
COVID-19 Policy Takes Steps to Advance Gender Equity—But These Are Only a Start
The national policy response has featured a handful of provisions that aim to advance gender and economic equity, both federally and in some states. Good news? Sort of.
Schools Implement “Pink Box Project” to Make Menstrual Products Available Despite Closures
With social distancing measures in mind, a California chapter of Girls Learn International acknowledged students’ fears of leaving home to get the products that they needed—and decided to create kits that are pre-packaged, individually wrapped and include five tampons and five pads per box.
Ask Ms. Green: How We Can Hold Companies Accountable for Toxic Menstrual Products
I mailed unused Lunapads and Thinx menstrual underwear to Dr. Graham Peaslee, a nuclear scientist at the University of Notre Dame who discovered PFAS chemicals in fast-food wrappers in 2017, and his undergraduate student assistant Robert Bartsch. The results are in, and I’m afraid it’s bad news.
The Ms. Q&A: The Women Behind “Pandora’s Box” Want You to Talk About Menstruation
“Pandora’s Box” is a documentary that takes us from Maasai villages to Mumbai, from London to Manhattan—and in each community, we meet people who were deprived of their dignity, opportunities and their voices because they began to bleed. Three of the women who helped tell the story talked to Ms. at the film’s premiere about what they’ve learned from the movement—and the movie.
We Heart: The Period Tracking App Resisting Anti-Abortion Government Surveillance
Unlike almost every other period tracking app, Euki does not store any user data in the cloud.
Incarcerated People Deserve the Dignity of Menstrual Equity
Along with many of the women I was incarcerated with, I used my own homemade products rather than beg for more from an unconcerned correctional officer or risk bleeding through my clothes. As a result of my creativity to survive with some modicum of dignity, I ended up needing a hysterectomy when I got home.
Repealing the Tampon Tax is Just the Beginning
We must ensure that all people have equitable access to menstrual products—whether access is out of reach because of poverty, homelessness or incarceration.
The Fight for Menstrual Equity Marches on in Massachusetts
The I AM Bill would provide free menstrual products at all homeless shelters, prisons and public schools throughout the Bay State.