Making sure women feel confident to enjoy sports is still an ongoing battle, and there are big discussions to address one of the key barriers faced when playing sports - periods.
“Removing the stigma of talking about periods will help encourage more women and girls to participate in sport”, Minister for Social Justice Jane Hutt has said. This means making period products at sport facilities more available, improving men’s understanding of period dignity and teaching how menstrual cycles impact training.
Members of Cardiff City Women's football team are also keen to tackle the stigma head on, and know first-hand how feeling undignified can impact people on their period. Siobhan Walsh, 28, has been part of the team since she was 17.
She said: “We used to go into changing rooms and feel like we didn’t belong. When I first started here there were hardly any girls teams in general and there's way more now so that’s obviously a great thing to see. Girls being comfortable and confident to play football is really what we want. We’re lucky that where we play we’ve got some great facilities but when we’ve visited some teams in the past it’s not always the case.
“You then don’t feel that great when you’re playing if you don’t feel welcome. We also used to wear oversized kit from the previous year’s hand me downs with random initials from men’s players so it’s great now that we’ve got we’ve obviously got women’s kit."
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At Ocean Park Arena, where women and girls’ football at Cardiff City FC members train, their changing rooms are unisex but were designed with females in mind- after female footballers reported they had often had to get ready in changing rooms full of urinals with just one private loo. To discuss the need to improve period dignity in sport, Ms Hutt met the players to get a good look at the facilities.
Ms Hutt said: “It’s really great to be at Ocean Park which was designed to encourage women to play football. What’s so important is that today we are focusing on any barriers which get in the way of them doing that.
“But periods happen to women and girls and it’s an issue that we are addressing in the Welsh Government. We’re particularly keen to overcome these barriers.”
When asked why the push for period dignity is happening now, Ms Hutt added: “It does seem extraordinary that it’s taken us until today in 2023 to be publicly and openly talking about these things which have been part of women’s lives forever. But we in the Welsh government several years ago now said we must look at period dignity.
“We also addressed it because of period poverty, because of austerity and now the cost of living crisis. We knew that it was actually becoming very difficult for many girls and women, and families in terms of access to period products so we’ve been putting money into schools to provide free products and get those into the community as well.
“This made us think about the whole issue of period dignity. This is about getting rid of the stigma and we learned a lot from young women and what it means to them, and how it can have a barrier in their life.”
Head of women and girl's football at the FAW Lowri Roberts said: "We developed the facilities at Ocean Park with House of Sport, and we're so delighted now that it is filled with activities for women and girls four nights a week. And that environment and safe space is built on (the question) - what do women and girls need?
"We are delighted to be here with Cardiff City Women who are trailblazers in their own right and are breaking down huge barriers whether that's social barriers in accessing football or whether that is normalising what have traditionally been taboo subjects like periods."
The Welsh Government invests in period poverty and dignity, including £12m for free period products, £24m for inclusive facilities, and £1.25m for gender issues. And Sport Wales are prioritising applications which address inequality including issues around gender, such as period dignity.
Cardiff City Women are also taking part in research on the impact of menstrual cycles on performance to determine peak training and play times. They are hoping more knowledge smash barriers around period conversations, and are also keen to employ more female coaches, and make players feel comfortable to use their voice.
The big push also comes at the same time that the The Welsh Rugby Union are leading the way in the use of menstrual cycle technology to inform the way they train and recover. Through the club's partnership with Vodafone they have been using the menstrual cycle tracking technology on Vodafone's PLAYER.Connect platform which has helped the team analyse how the menstrual cycle impacts performance, wellbeing and recovery.
The platform is currently being used by Wales Women throughout the TikTok Women’s Six Nations 2023 campaign, the first women’s side to do so, and this has already had a significant impact on their training and preparation, with WRU National Women's Physiotherapist, Jo Perkins saying, "PLAYER.Connect give us information in real time, and is far more user friendly. That means we can quickly implement strategies, inform change, avoid injuries and help players reach their peak preparation ahead of each fixture."
Wales Women prop, Cerys Hale, said: "The PLAYER.Connect technology has really inproved my performance this season. It's given me a greater awareness of things I need to do away from the field, so for example I can monitor soreness, be more aware of how i'm recovering and then look at what I can do before training to help manage injury prevention. This includes tips on how I can change my nurition during each of the phases of my clycle, how I can reduce my symptoms, and it's just given me more confidence that i'm putting my body in the right place to be able to perform."
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