How safe spaces help girls navigate period challenges

Are there enough safe spaces to help tackle stigma and remove the shame associated with menstruation?

For every woman and every young girl out there, you will be met with a different answer, given their proximity to accessible information and resources as a result of the environments they come from.

This year marks 11 years since the first Menstrual Hygiene Day was declared – a day created to drive awareness about the importance of menstrual health and tackling the stigmas attached to menstruation.

With this year’s theme being Together for a #PeriodFriendlyWorld, it served as a reminder that there’s still a massive gap in society that requires everyone to play a role in creating a friendly world for not only young girls and women, but also for parents to help steer their children.

For a period-friendly world to exist, the larger population has to acknowledge just how inequality – both gender and economic – has had a hand in determining how important matters of menstruation mean for girls.

According to Stellenbosch University Hospital, 30% of girls in South Africa experience period poverty – with this fact only representing a fraction of young girls who do not have access to sanitary products.

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So why aren’t we, as a society, dismantling the idea of period poverty?

Other factors that add to period poverty include stigmas driven by cultural taboos, menstrual-specific programmes and lessons in schools to the lack of realistic marketing around menstruation.

These are just some of the factors that have been a barrier in equipping those affected from fully embracing a positive period experience.

As a woman who’s navigated this journey and a leader in the home and personal care space who has marketed sanitary products to women, my role became a lot more than just about selling products, but placing a responsibility to ensure that no teenage girl or woman gets left behind.

For many of us, one of the first and most influential sources of information about our periods comes from the women in our lives – mothers, aunts, grandmothers and older cousins, who have been our “safe spaces” in navigating challenges around managing periods.

However, through their wisdom, there’s been a lot of “figuring things out” on our own because they, too, could only pass on what they were taught and in some instances, their knowledge perpetuated cycles of shame.

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Recently Lil-Lets SA launched a campaign called Cycle Breakers – which took a bold step of ensuring that not only do we break the cycle of shame and stigma, but that parents are at the forefront of creating safe spaces for their teenage girls who have started their first period.

The success of the campaign also grabbed the attention of the department of basic education to have Lil-Lets as a partner at the upcoming Indaba on Menstrual Health and Sanitary Dignity this week.

The campaign used people with teenage daughters to unpack the challenges that most parent-daughter relationships experience. It also highlighted the resources and tools that LilLets has that many parents and teenagers need at this time.

Placing the onus on parents to be better equipped for navigating these experiences has been an eye-opener in ensuring that girls move in the world with a sense of confidence in navigating their periods. This is the type of approach that most marketers need to consider.

We’ve also had to acknowledge the importance of utilising both online and physical spaces to maintain the dignity of girls, such as creating period-friendly bathrooms in schools, equipping teachers on menstruation-related topics and giving teenagers and parents a platform such as Lil-Lets Talk to ask period-related questions with the help of our experts.

These have been some of our ongoing efforts and while the duty of our brand has been to help minimise the challenges that many girls go through while on their period, we’re hoping that more and more people become active citizens in identifying just how we can make the world a better place for young girls who are menstruating – not just on Menstrual Hygiene Day, but every day.

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