Periods are Not a Luxury. Period.
Talking Periods in Public | NPR
"Shark week," "Aunt Flo," "Carrie at the prom" — these are a few common nicknames for periods, according to Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, author of Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity. But the list is far from exhaustive: "There are something like 5,000 euphemisms for periods," she says.
Why all the code words? Society has become more open to talking about menstruation in recent years (in fact, NPR declared 2015 the "year of the period"), but periods are still a topic more often talked around than talked about. That can have consequences — like shame, undiagnosed medical conditions and lack of product innovation, to name a few.
Hear five people who are fighting the taboo share their thoughts and experiences about periods — from leaks to the "tampon tax" to what it means to bleed when you don't identify as a woman — all out in the open.
Why Periods Are Political: The Fight For Menstrual Equity
Tuesday, Oct 10 2017 • 11 a.m. (ET)
In this photograph taken on February 3, 2017, a Nepalese woman prepares to sleep in a Chhaupadi hut during her menstruation period. The practice of banishing menstruating women from the home — barred from touching food, religious icons, cattle and men — was officially banned a decade ago.
It’s hard to fight for a cause if it can’t be discussed above a whisper. But a growing number of activists are speaking out loud in favor of what’s being called menstrual equity.
On any given day, more than 800 million girls and women around the world are menstruating. And for many of them, in the U.S. and elsewhere, it’s a problem — sometimes with life-or-death consequences.
Poor girls and women often are unable to afford menstrual products and many have limited access to toilets or clean water. In some cultures, females on their period are forced to live apart from their families. In July a menstruating teenager in Nepal died from a snakebite in the cowshed where she was sequestered.
In the U.S. a movement is gaining steam to eliminate the sales tax for tampons and pads and to ensure period products are provided in public schools, homeless shelters and prisons — all part of the fight for menstrual equity.
Guests
- Jennifer Weiss-Wolf A lawyer and vice president for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School; author of "Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity"
- Cory Booker U.S. senator, New Jersey (D); former mayor of Newark
- Marni Sommer Associate professor of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health; executive director of Grow and Know, a non-profit that develops puberty books for girls and boys in poor countries
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