Almost two-thirds of young women are struggling to afford period products as inflation and Australia’s cost-of-living crisis continue to bite.
In an April survey of 517 menstruating adults born after 1980, Plan International Australia found that 57% reported it was more difficult to pay for pads, tampons and reusable menstrual health items in 2022 than in previous years.
Increasingly unaffordable period products was a more acute problem among younger people – those born after 1997, or Gen Z – 64% of whom said they were finding it harder to cover the cost.
Those who earned less than $50,000 a year found it particularly difficult to also pay for painkillers and menstrual management medication, with 47% saying their inability to afford the medication was affecting their mental health and wellbeing. Among members of Gen Z, 16% said it was affecting their education and the same proportion said it affected their work.
Inflation was a key contributor to the problem, Plan International Australia’s chief executive Susanne Legena said, but it was also a gendered issue.
“It’s a fixed cost for women and girls that you can’t avoid, so you’re very beholden to the market in that way. It’s a cost that [women and girls] bear that boys and men don’t have,” Legena said.
“At the heart of this, there’s still so much stigma attached to women bleeding. It’s not something we talk about very freely, it’s not talked about widely in popular culture, it doesn’t fit well with some of the stereotypes of femininity.”
Two-thirds (66%) of respondents with a disability said they were finding it harder to afford period products.
While the report did not document new findings regarding the experience of Indigenous women and those in remote areas, it noted that period products were reported to cost vastly more in remote areas than in the cities, and that accessing menstrual pain management came with additional systemic barriers.
More than half of respondents reported that their main coping strategy with rising costs was to buy a cheaper brand of pads or tampons.
But one in five said they also changed single-use products less frequently than recommended due to the cost, making them more vulnerable to health complications. Many women could not afford reusable items like menstrual cups or period underwear, which can have a significant upfront cost.
The research comes after an interim report earlier this month from a Senate inquiry investigating poverty in Australia, which detailed evidence that women in poverty were using “bits of rag” to manage their periods because they couldn’t afford pads, tampons, or reusable sanitary items.
Plan International is calling on the Australian government to provide free menstrual products in all public bathrooms – as with soap and toilet paper – without discriminating against gender diverse people, along with specific subsidies for those who need menstrual products and better education around menstruation.
A similar law exists in Scotland, where the Period Products (Free Provision) Act requires local authorities and education providers to make period products obtainable free of charge for anyone who needs them.
Legena applauded the recent decision by the Victorian government to install 1,500 pad and tampon dispensing machines at up to 700 public sites such as courts, libraries, public hospitals and train stations.
“It will be really interesting to observe just how that rolls out and what lessons there are from that, which could inform a national approach,” Legena said.
“If men got their periods, I can’t imagine that this would be an issue. There’s something deep in here that is gendered, about how we view women and their ability to birth, and the bleeding that goes with that – and that’s something that we have to tackle at the same time.”
