Breaking the cycle: Period poverty, gender-based violence, and the fight for menstrual justice 

On May 28^th, Menstrual Hygiene Day, we’re reminded that safe and accessible menstrual health is still far from achieved for many women, girls, and gender-diverse people around the world.  

Menstrual health has long been framed as a hygiene problem rather than a question of rights, power, and structural inequality. Reframing it as a rights issue is the first step toward addressing why, to this day, so many across the world still cannot manage their periods safely and with dignity. Three interconnected failures, in policy, corporate accountability, and the persistence of stigma, sustain this injustice, and understanding them is the only way to dismantle them. 

Policy failures 

Governments have the power to make menstrual products accessible, and still too many have chosen not to. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe, menstrual products remain subject to taxes that classify them as luxury goods rather than basic necessities. They are mostly excluded from public health provision in schools and clinics and absent from national sexual and reproductive health education frameworks. 

In Venezuela, for example, a package of tampons can cost up to three months’ salary. In the Dominican Republic, 20% of girls from rural areas miss 2 to 3 days of school every month due to a lack of access to sanitary products. Even in places where taxes have been scrapped or reduced, such as Kenya, France, and Colombia, the cuts have not always translated into lower prices or greater access to products. This is especially relevant for women, girls, and people who menstruate who need them the most, because structural conditions driving unaffordability remain unaddressed. 

Scotland remains the only country in the world to provide free menstrual products universally. The gap between what is possible and what governments are doing is a policy choice, and its consequences are borne entirely by those who menstruate.  

These consequences are severe. When women, girls, and gender-diverse people cannot afford or access menstrual products, the harm extends beyond missed school days. As documented by the National Library of Medicine, in Kenya and across Sub-Saharan Africa, some girls and young women engage in transactional sex in exchange for the products they need. This is a direct line between menstrual poverty and gender-based violence that is too often erased from policy and public debate. Period poverty, in this sense, is a gateway through which other rights are violated.  

Corporate irresponsibility 

The policy failures of states are compounded by the irresponsibility of the corporations that manufacture menstrual products. Most commercial sanitary pads are made with synthetic materials such as polyethylene, polypropylene, superabsorbent polymers, dyes, and fragrances that come into prolonged intimate contact with the skin.  

 A 2024 systematic review published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology confirmed the presence of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, including phthalates, volatile organic compounds, dioxins, parabens, and fragrance chemicals, in tampons and pads. This means chemicals are absorbed without undergoing the same metabolic processes as other routes of exposure. Because of this, the health consequences are not theoretical: research links elevated phthalate exposure to altered menstrual cycles, disrupted ovarian function, endometriosis, and poor pregnancy outcomes. The average menstruating person is exposed to these products for approximately 1,800 days over their lifetime. Yet in most countries, manufacturers are not required to disclose what their products contain. As feminist health campaigner Helen Lynn, puts it: “Women and those who menstruate need greater awareness and strong legislation to protect them from these harmful effects, ensuring that products used in intimate areas are safe and free from dangerous substances.”  

Regulatory agencies across regions have already classified certain phthalates as substances of very high concern and banned them from children’s toys, yet no equivalent standard exists for menstrual products in contact with some of the most absorptive tissue in the body. Women and girls have a right to know what they are using. But more fundamentally, they have a right to products that do not harm them. 

Women, girls, and gender-diverse people have the right to know what’s in the products they use. When this information is withheld, people facing multiple forms of oppression face an additional health risk, on top of the poverty, stigma, and violence they’re already navigating to manage.   

Similarly, the environmental consequences of these products continue the cycle of corporate irresponsibility. Most commercial pads are non-biodegradable and take between 500 and 800 years to decompose. In communities without water infrastructure, something that happens disproportionately in the Global South, they end up in waterways and agricultural soil, directly contaminating the water sources that safe menstrual hygiene depends on. According to Development Aid, in Kenya, used pads discarded without adequate disposal facilities end up in waterways, degrading the environments of the same women and girls who cannot afford or access alternatives.  

According to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, these violations are not acceptable. Corporations that manufacture and distribute menstrual products must address their differential impact on women and girls through consistent safety standards, transparent ingredient disclosure, and accountability across the full production and disposal cycle.  

Period stigma 

Underneath the policy failures and corporate irresponsibility lies the stigma that frames menstruation as ‘shameful’, ‘dirty’ and solely ‘private’. This stigma is actively weaponized. It’s used to justify restrictions on women’s activities, enforce domestic control, and exclude girls from education and public life. This stigma shapes what governments are willing to legislate, what corporations are required to disclose, and what communities are willing to demand. In many countries, people who menstruate manage their periods in secrecy, without adequate information and safe facilities. They also lack the assurance that their experiences are recognized as a rights issue rather than personal, private matters. This is why menstrual health cannot be reduced to product access alone. Dismantling stigma is part of the structural transformation that access to products, transparent regulation, and accountable governance must accompany.  

Across the world, feminist organizations have long demanded that access to menstrual products is a matter of human rights, that silence around menstruation has created harmful stigma, and that menstrual health and rights requires a structural transformation.  

At Women’s Link, we work alongside these grassroots movements through strategic litigation, feminist partnerships, and cross-regional advocacy. This includes intervening before domestic and regional courts to establish and advance the right to safe menstrual products, access to these products, and the right to ingredient transparency. This Menstrual Hygiene Day, we reaffirm that menstrual health is sexual and reproductive health and a matter of gender justice. Every person who menstruates deserves a standard of safety and dignity.