According to Plan Canada’s 2019 annual report, one in three people under age 25 don’t have access to menstrual hygiene products. A new wave of menstrual advocates are fighting to change that statistic—and they aren’t slowing down during the pandemic.
Activist and founder of Bleed the North, 17-year-old Isabela Rittinger, started her menstrual equity organization in Toronto, ON only a few weeks before federal COVID-19 restrictions were put in place. She said starting her organization during a pandemic has been tough, but worth it.
“It was both a blessing and curse to hit the ground running during COVID-19,” Rittinger said.
Her organization, which is devoted to achieving menstrual equity in Ontario by providing menstrual products to those who cannot afford them, needs funding. Rittinger said the organization relies on donations, but sometimes that doesn’t make the cut. She said bake sales and active participation would’ve helped her gather more donations to supply people with menstrual products, but Bleed the North never got the chance due to COVID-19.
She added that the pandemic has given her organization more time to push menstrual equity through legislative means and helped them focus on advocating through social media campaigns to reach members of parliament.
“There’s no reason for people who menstruate to have to be burdened by it,” she said.
Rittinger added one of the most important elements of achieving menstrual equity is through education, recalling an incident at her school. Her teacher separated the girls from the boys to explain menstruation to them.
“This wasn’t a thing to be spoken about two decades ago,” she said. “But this is something boys—everybody—needs to know about without using foreign names to sugarcoat it or hiding products in boxes.”
Karp is using this time to push for gender-neutral bathrooms in schools and universities. She said menstruation products should also be provided in men’s bathrooms because transgender women and men are not being fully considered.
“We need to change the stigma and not limit menstruation to women,” Karp said.
She said current restrictions are allowing her organization to focus on that message.
“We want to provide a toolkit for people to understand menstrual culture and help amplify their voices,” Karp added.
Karp said she is currently working on social media campaigns, providing menstrual products, and talking to experts who could highlight that “everyone menstruates.”
Founder of menstruation advocacy organization Period Packs and business administration student at The John Molson School of Business, Meghan White, also said her organization is devoting its time to helping other advocacy groups reach legislative change while providing as many menstrual products possible given COVID-19 restrictions.
“We had to take a little time to pivot our services and most of our services were based on being at different events while having a very physical presence in the community,” she said.
With that, Period Packs had to start from scratch due to the pandemic and figure out different ways of achieving their goals remotely, White added.
“All our efforts are to just get people products because so many of them just lost their jobs and they’re not going to be able to meet their basic needs anymore,” she said.
Period Packs has since worked with 15 different community organizations, from people doing street outreach programs to emergency community housing, and have managed to give out around 25,000 menstrual products in the last few months.
White said the organization is planning for the future and is in the process of holding a menstrual equity summit in spring 2021. Until then, she is trying her best to help other menstrual equity organizations push for legislative change.
“Menstrual health is health care. They’re synonymous. There’s no difference. We need to take this seriously,” she said. “Since we’re a developed nation, we need to lead by example, and right now we’re not doing that.”
Featured graphic by Jillian Piper.
