Thousands of Kiwi women struggle to afford period products each month. Photo / Getty Images
Thousands of Kiwi women struggle to afford period products each month. Photo / Getty Images
A young mum knocks on the door of a Christchurch charity. She’s been bleeding ever since the recent birth of her baby, but she can’t afford to buy period products. She’s been reduced to using tissues, and is otherwise unable to leave her house.
It’s a scenario that’s all too real for tens of thousands of Kiwis. And it’s just one example of many that the founders of The Period Place - which supplies menstrual products to organisations like this one throughout New Zealand - hear every day.
An estimated 70,000 women in New Zealand experience period poverty each month, according to data collected before the pandemic by The Period Place from New Zealand’s poverty statistics, the Youth 19 Rangatahi Smart Survey, and Stats NZ.
That can mean not being able to afford to buy tampons or pads, only being able to access donated products, or lacking education around what options are available.
The Period Place co-founder Danika Revell tells the Herald the data shows that “period inequity is a lot more systemic than we thought”.
Dr Amelia Ryan (left), and Danika Revell of The Period Place.
“It very much matches child poverty statistics, those who are living in lower socioeconomic brackets. It’s not just access to period products for your period – it’s also post-birth.
“You bleed really badly for weeks, and then you might be spotting for a couple of months and if you’re going home to a place where there’s no extra money for period products once a month, you’re not going to have that for weeks.”
Revell notes that in recent years, the Covid-19 lockdowns “highlighted some really intense stories” of period poverty, citing domestic violence situations where “their partner would not let them purchase period products”.
“They would control the family budget because they didn’t want them going out of the house that week, and so by being in lockdown, they couldn’t reach out to their friends and get secret ones like they normally did,” she says.
“Perhaps their workplace might have been supporting them, or they would use the toilet paper from the workplace for that week. And without that, they had to use the home toilet paper, which made that go faster.”
Another example is women living in closed communities, who may not even figure in the statistics.
The Period Place founder Danika Revell says Covid-19 highlighted the issue of period poverty in New Zealand. Photo / Getty Images
“Those are people that probably wouldn’t even be in our numbers, the way that the information was collected, but we know are really experiencing it. And they’re not just experiencing period inequity or period poverty. They’re having their period weaponised against them,” Revell explains.
“It highlighted some really painful ways that we hadn’t thought about period inequity before.”
But while it’s been difficult to hear those stories, Revell adds that “it’s been great because the light has been shone”, and the charity has been able to provide support in new ways.
“We’ve supported the police with period products they can take into domestic violence situations [as well as] organisations that support different closed communities in New Zealand that may be living a cult-like existence that we have been able to sneak period products into.”
And the charity has now teamed up with Countdown and its suppliers for a month-long appeal during which 5 cents from the sale of every period product on its shelves will go to the Period Place, with the same suppliers donating a single period item for each pack sold and the supermarket making a one-off donation of $20,000.
The campaign will run for four weeks, having started on August 29, until September 23.
Dr Amelia Ryan is a gynaecologist and obstetrician who works as a fertility specialist at Advanced Gynaecology Auckland.
Gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Amelia Ryan says not having access to enough period products can worsen the physical symptoms that come with getting a period.
“For people who can’t access period products and that time of the month when they bleed is associated with significant stress, missing school, missing work because they’re not able to, that’s only going to negatively impact on their pain - and then increase that pain from being manageable to something that really takes over,” she tells the Herald.
“The additional stress ... as a hormonal state can negatively impact medical outcomes as well.”
Periods aren’t exactly a taboo topic anymore, but many women still struggle to talk about the pain or stress they experience because they “don’t want to make a fuss”, she notes.
“We’re brought up to not complain, as a gender. There’s almost a sense of pride in having a childbirth without needing pain relief, which is just bizarre, but true. And a lot of medical conditions that affect the reproductive cycle run in families, like adenomyosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome.
“So if you were a teenager who’s experiencing problems with your period and you talk to your mum, they’re likely to say, ‘oh yeah, that’s just what our periods are like in our family’ because that’s what they experience.
“So there’s an individual level, a family level, and then there certainly has historically been a level in the medical profession of minimising symptoms.”
As a gynaecologist, Ryan feels she has a responsibility to change that attitude.
“I see a lot of patients who have pain, and one of my jobs is to really validate the fact that what those people are experiencing is not normal and that it’s okay that they want help with it.
“So I think the more that we can be talking about periods, the more awareness there would be of what is normal and therefore what is abnormal, and that will only improve outcomes for patients.”
Bethany Reitsma is an Auckland-based journalist covering lifestyle and entertainment stories who joined the Herald in 2019. She specialises in lifestyle human interest stories, money-saving hacks, and anything even remotely related to coffee.
