More than 68 per cent of women in T&T were un­able to at­tend ei­ther work or school be­cause of their pe­ri­od, a study pub­lished in an in­ter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic re­search jour­nal this week has re­vealed.

“On av­er­age, women skipped ap­prox­i­mate­ly three days of work or school due to their pe­ri­ods,” the four-month-long study con­duct­ed in T&T stat­ed.

“Al­though we did not mea­sure the loss of in­come due to men­stru­al prob­lems in this study, we an­tic­i­pate that women who are dai­ly-paid work­ers, for in­stance, would lose in­come for every day they spend away from work. This can be dev­as­tat­ing for women who re­port­ed stay­ing away from work for an av­er­age of three days due to their pe­ri­ods,” it stat­ed.

In ad­di­tion to this, the study stat­ed that more than half of the women in T&T re­vealed that at some point in time they had to re­sort to us­ing ei­ther toi­let pa­per, nap­kins, or pa­per tow­els in place of san­i­tary sup­plies be­cause of the ex­or­bi­tant cost of pe­ri­od prod­ucts.

“This find­ing high­lights the stark re­al­i­ty women face where they have to bal­ance their spend­ing habits to pri­ori­tise oth­er es­sen­tial goods such as food, light­ing, and oth­er pub­lic ameni­ties. Al­though men­stru­al prod­ucts are con­sid­ered es­sen­tial items, our find­ings sug­gest that they are out of reach for many women, where even switch­ing to a cheap­er brand can be too cost­ly,” it stat­ed.

It has been es­ti­mat­ed that a woman will spend, on av­er­age, $125,016 on san­i­tary prod­ucts over her life­time.

“Women have ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 men­stru­al cy­cles dur­ing their re­pro­duc­tive life, and the fi­nan­cial bur­den they have to bear are of­ten de­bil­i­tat­ing,” the study stat­ed.

To help ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion 99 per cent of the women in T&T said they be­lieved that at least one men­stru­al prod­uct should be made freely avail­able in the pub­lic sec­tor or oth­er places of work.

On Mon­day, the Med­ical Sci­ence and Dis­cov­ery jour­nal pub­lished the study “As­sess­ing pe­ri­od pover­ty in T&T: An ex­plorato­ry ap­proach.”

The pur­pose of the study, which is be­lieved to be the first of its kind in T&T, was to as­sess pe­ri­od pover­ty in this coun­try.

It was au­thored by Crown Her Ini­tia­tive Lead Dr Nadi­ra Ram­bo­cas, Yas­phal Kissoon of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Jade-Marie Kennedy of the Ro­tary Clubs of Dis­tricts 7030, T&T, Kabi­rah Mo­hammed of the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try, Danae Khan of the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, and M Shas­tri Moti­lal and Anu Bisses­sar of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

A na­tion­al­ly-drawn sam­ple of 504 women be­tween the ages of 18-48 was used from var­i­ous ur­ban ar­eas of the coun­try.

“A cross-sec­tion­al re­search de­sign us­ing a 14-item ques­tion­naire with a mix of closed and open-end­ed ques­tions was utilised to ob­tain da­ta about women’s ex­pe­ri­ences con­cern­ing the af­ford­abil­i­ty of pe­ri­od prod­ucts and how they cope with their pe­ri­ods,” it stat­ed.

Over the years, the lack of ac­cess for women and girls to ad­e­quate men­stru­al san­i­tary prod­ucts has caused con­cern for stake­hold­ers seek­ing to al­le­vi­ate grow­ing lev­els of pe­ri­od pover­ty.

Pe­ri­od pover­ty is de­fined as “a lack of ac­cess to men­stru­al prod­ucts, ed­u­ca­tion, hy­giene fa­cil­i­ties, waste man­age­ment, or a com­bi­na­tion of these.

“In par­tic­u­lar, the prob­lem has been ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the in­abil­i­ty of women to af­ford such prod­ucts, es­pe­cial­ly those from low-in­come house­holds, but in­creas­ing­ly, this has be­come wide­spread across all in­come lev­els due to the im­pacts of the on­go­ing COVID-19 glob­al pan­dem­ic,” the study stat­ed.

Glob­al­ly, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 mil­lion women and girls ex­pe­ri­ence pe­ri­od pover­ty which has been at­trib­uted to a scarci­ty of re­sources and as­so­ci­at­ed stig­mas sur­round­ing men­stru­a­tion.

The study was done to de­ter­mine what the sit­u­a­tion was like lo­cal­ly.

Eth­i­cal ap­proval for the study was ob­tained by the Na­tion­al Ethics Com­mit­tee of the Min­istry of Health.

Ques­tions were gen­er­at­ed to close­ly mir­ror those used in a re­port pub­lished in 2018 by the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment on ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to hy­gien­ic prod­ucts.

In ad­di­tion, these ques­tions were adapt­ed to suit the lo­cal fe­male pop­u­la­tion and were val­i­dat­ed by ex­perts in the med­ical fields and gen­der stud­ies at the UWI, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus.

Da­ta col­lec­tion was done over a four-month pe­ri­od that com­menced on Ju­ly 2022 and was com­plet­ed on Oc­to­ber 2022.

A to­tal of 504 par­tic­i­pants were ran­dom­ly tar­get­ed and se­lect­ed from var­i­ous work­places and ur­ban ar­eas across the East/ West cor­ri­dor (Port-of-Spain to Ari­ma) and the North/South com­mu­ni­ties (Mt Hope to San Fer­nan­do) in T&T.

The mean age of par­tic­i­pants who ex­pe­ri­enced their first pe­ri­od was 12.13 years.

Among the sam­ple, 76.2 per cent of women did not be­lieve that pe­ri­od prod­ucts were af­ford­able.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, women spent a me­di­an amount of $100 per month on pe­ri­od prod­ucts.

“Women were al­so asked to in­di­cate if they could af­ford their pe­ri­od prod­ucts month­ly, and 47.8 per cent re­port­ed that they could do so. About half of the par­tic­i­pants (50.6 per cent) in­di­cat­ed that they some­times strug­gle to af­ford pe­ri­od prod­ucts and 1.6 per cent stat­ed that they could not af­ford pe­ri­od prod­ucts,” it stat­ed.

More than 81 per cent of the women sur­veyed stat­ed that their pe­ri­ods af­fect­ed their dai­ly func­tion­ing.

“More­over, just over half of the women in the sam­ple stat­ed that they had to lie or make up an al­ter­nate ex­cuse be­cause of their pe­ri­od (55.5 per cent) com­pared to 44.5 per cent that did not do so. Not on­ly have pe­ri­ods af­fect­ed their dai­ly func­tion­ing or made them skip work or school, women of­ten have to seek med­ical treat­ment and bear the costs of med­ical vis­its for it as well,” it stat­ed.

“While most women in­di­cat­ed that they did not have to seek med­ical at­ten­tion (53.7 per cent), those par­tic­i­pants who did ac­cess med­ical ser­vices (47.3 per cent) spent a me­di­an amount of $600 on each vis­it to a med­ical doc­tor,” the study stat­ed.

The study stat­ed that some women, there­fore, do not on­ly have to con­tend with the high costs of pe­ri­od prod­ucts.

For those who sought med­ical at­ten­tion for their pe­ri­ods, the costs were am­pli­fied due to med­ical bills and med­ica­tions.

“Giv­en that the ma­jor­i­ty of the women do not be­lieve their work­place or schools of­fer free pe­ri­od prod­ucts, the bur­den on them to pro­vide their own be­comes even greater. This is why they be­lieve that work­places and schools should of­fer at least one free pe­ri­od prod­uct for use. To our knowl­edge, there is no set pol­i­cy or guide­line that al­lows for work­places or schools to dis­trib­ute free pe­ri­od prod­ucts for women or girls. While ef­forts are made to make pe­ri­od prod­ucts more af­ford­able and ac­ces­si­ble to women in sev­er­al coun­tries, Scot­land and New Zealand are the on­ly coun­tries that pro­vide free men­stru­al prod­ucts for women and girls,” it stat­ed.

The study stat­ed that its find­ings pro­vid­ed fur­ther ev­i­dence of the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of pe­ri­od prod­uct af­ford­abil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly when T&T is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a harsh eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

“While the coun­try does not im­pose any tax­es on men­stru­al prod­ucts, this does not nec­es­sar­i­ly equate to af­ford­abil­i­ty as these prod­ucts may be sub­ject to high im­port levies since they are not pro­duced do­mes­ti­cal­ly,” it stat­ed.

“This study has found that women ex­pe­ri­ence pe­ri­od pover­ty in T&T. Women find it dif­fi­cult to af­ford and ac­cess pe­ri­od prod­ucts and of­ten have to re­sort to us­ing al­ter­na­tive prod­ucts to suit their needs.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, this study high­light­ed oth­er is­sues that women face dur­ing their pe­ri­ods, such as high costs of med­ica­tion and med­ical vis­its as well as loss of dai­ly func­tion­ing and ab­sen­teeism from work and schools,” it stat­ed.

“In light of these is­sues, we rec­om­mend that leg­is­la­tion be draft­ed to des­ig­nate pe­ri­od prod­ucts as es­sen­tial so that every woman and girl by right has ac­cess to pe­ri­od prod­ucts that are freely avail­able or at a re­duced cost,” it stat­ed.

“We al­so rec­om­mend poli­cies or guide­lines be put in place at schools or work­places for the pro­vi­sion of free men­stru­al prod­ucts for women and girls. We pro­pose such prac­tices are im­ple­ment­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing those at the gov­ern­men­tal lev­el and NGOs. In that case, we be­lieve that the prob­lem of pe­ri­od pover­ty ex­pe­ri­enced by women can be elim­i­nat­ed or, at the very least, re­duced,” the study stat­ed.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Ram­bo­cas said the study, un­for­tu­nate­ly, pro­vides ev­i­dence of the ex­is­tence of Pe­ri­od Pover­ty in T&T.

“There­fore it is our in­ten­tion, to work close­ly with the Gov­ern­ment ( the At­tor­ney gen­er­al’s of­fice and the Health Min­istry) as well as NGOs alike to en­sure that no fe­male of the men­stru­at­ing age is left be­hind,” Ram­bo­cas stat­ed.

“We hope that one day at least one free men­stru­al prod­uct can be made avail­able to all women of T&T,” she stat­ed.