Today #FreePeriods and The Red Box Project (with The Pink Protest‘s support) are launching a legal campaign to ask schools and colleges to supply free menstrual products for students, as Amika George writes in The Guardian.
Today, #FreePeriods launches a new legal campaign to end Period Poverty. We demand free, universal access in ALL schools and colleges with govt funding. Support our crowdfunding here and let's end Period Poverty in the UK: https://t.co/IH1gErdXi6 pic.twitter.com/KrWwjBI1w9
— Amika George (@AmikaGeorge) January 8, 2019
I’ve found this fascinating to watch as over the past six months I’ve been mapping and researching ‘period poverty’ activism for The ‘Period Poverty’ Project.
There is lots of interesting activity going on at the moment around menstruation. In the past month alone we’ve seen the above legal challenge launched, a ‘period poverty’ grant from Let’s Talk. Period open, Project Period’s #TamponTaxi driving around London to raise awareness of ‘period poverty’ and Bloody Good Period putting on #FlowHoHo at the Choose Love shop. These examples only skim the surface of the sheer volume of ‘period poverty’ activity that has been happening of late. As Period! points out, 2018 was the year when discussing menstruation became socially accepted with much of these conversations being mediated through social media.
Alongside analysing representations, conducting interviews and reviewing demographic information related to ‘period poverty‘, I’m creating a timeline of ‘period poverty’ campaigning and activism to explore the multitude of activity that’s been happening recently. In part, this is to better understand what work is going on to fight this social inequality, consider what issues are uncovered through such work, and whether any further issues are arising. So if you think I should be aware of any campaigns, organisations or work going on, no matter how big or small, then do get in touch as I’d love to hear from you.
*Feature image taken by Chris Moffat