📣 Period Poverty in the U.S.: A Crisis of Dignity, Health & Equity

As women advocates, we must name this clearly: the struggle to afford menstrual products is not a private issue—it is a public health, racial justice, and gender justice issue.

Key Stats You Need to Know

• Around 16.9 million people who menstruate in the U.S. live in poverty. Ballard Brief+1

• About 1 in 4 students (teens) have struggled to afford period products in the U.S. Period.org+2joghep.scholasticahq.com+2

• Among teens in the U.S., 44% report stress and embarrassment because they lacked access to menstrual products. Period.org

• 59% of teens say negative associations with menstruation affect them personally. Period.org

• The economic impact: between 2018 and 2021, period product insecurity rose significantly among adults: for example about 38% of menstruators in 2021 reported currently struggling to afford products—up from ~30% in 2018. Brookings+1

• Tax burden: Many U.S. states still impose sales taxes on menstrual products (sometimes up to 7%)—a burden when period products are necessities. joghep.scholasticahq.com

What This Means for Women & Maternal Health

• When we speak of maternal health, we often focus on pregnancy, birth, postpartum—but the foundation of care, the foundation of bodily integrity, begins with how our monthly cycles are treated.

• If women cannot reliably access period products, it signals a system that undervalues female‐bodied health and dignity.

• Women are disproportionately impacted because of the overlap of race, gender, and economic inequities.

• The same medical systems that dismiss period pain and menstruation often dismiss Black women’s pregnancy pain, their postpartum concerns, and their birth complications. The threads are connected.

Why This Is Not Just About Pads & Tampons—it’s About Justice

• Lack of access to menstrual products means missed school, missed work, missed opportunities: the data show students who lack products face interruptions. Harvard Public Health Magazine+1

• Using makeshift alternatives (cloth, toilet paper, wearing products too long) poses health risks: infections, toxic shock syndrome, lower self‐esteem, shame. Harvard Public Health Magazine

• Period poverty is a signal of structural neglect: lack of free products in public places, insufficient school policies, tax policies that treat menstrual supplies as optional rather than essential.

• It intersects with maternal health because when the monthly cycle is devalued, what follows (pregnancy, birthing, postpartum) is more vulnerable. Our bodies accumulate harms.

Call to Action: What We Must Demand Now

• Require schools (especially in underserved communities) to provide free period products in bathrooms and nurse offices (for women and girls…not for boys to waste and explore. Girls NEED the products.) 

When my son was young he had a metal halo device around his leg to secure his bone while the bone healed. Once it healed, he wanted to take it to school to present it for a science project to explain the science of the device to his peers. His surgeon said that was fine, we paid for it. But, they liked to sanitize these and take them for use for children in Africa and elsewhere in the world who could not otherwise afford them.

“Oh?! Nevermind! We didn’t know.”

At the same time, both my son and I urged her to please take the device to other children who needed them more. I’m a parent. One who had just gone through the ordeal of nurturing a child through surgery. One would expect me to respond that way. I was most pleased and proud of my son’s quick and kind response.

Oh, look. It is possible for boys to learn to be kind too.

• Advocate for menstrual equity laws: remove sales tax (“tampon tax”), classify menstrual products as essential health items.

• Center women’s voices in maternal health policy: when we say monthly cycle = body integrity = health, systems must respond.

• Partner with community groups to distribute products, raise awareness, destigmatize menstruation, and link these issues to broader maternal health justice.

• Educate: help girls, young women, and women of all ages understand that their period isn’t merely a nuisance—it is biological, systemic, and demands respect.

Final Word

Periods are not trivial.
They are not private shame.
They are foundational to health, dignity, and justice.

When women cannot access the basic supplies to carry their monthly cycle with dignity, we send a message: our bodies are disposable, our health is optional, our cycles don’t matter.

We know that for maternal health to improve—for mothers to survive and thrive—our monthly experiences must be honored, supported, and protected.

We will not wait for others to wake up.
We will name, we will build, we will demand.

Because female bodies, women’s bodies, matter.
And the language we use, the systems we fight, the policies we change—they all start with what we declare in the quiet of our cycles.