Schools providing Sanitary protection

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  • phryne wrote: »
    I remember when we were at school (1980s) you could go to the office if you had an emergency need for sanitary towels, but the school certainly wouldn't be expected to provide them to all pupils as a matter of course. We were an all-female school, in a rough area in London, with pupils from all backgrounds including very poor ones, yet nobody was absent due to not having sanitary protection.

    So what has changed between then and now?

    This is the very question that needs to be answered yet I don't think the answer is a simple one but a combination of reasons.
  • ViolaLass
    ViolaLass Posts: 5,764 Forumite
    I really dont know how i feel about this on one hand i feel that sometimes we make life easy for those people who for want of better words cannot be bothered and know someone else will provide and on the other hand those working families with no fixed income i feel should be helped

    I imagine people/families of both types exist but in what proportion? I have no idea but if i felt as you, I would want to know.

    Also, if someone does have 'useless' parents who won't provide, how does the state NOT stepping in help that child? The state provides a lot of things - education, medical care, transport, books (libraries) etc. No one suggests that those things are pandering to 'useless' parents.
  • phryne wrote: »
    I remember when we were at school (1980s) you could go to the office if you had an emergency need for sanitary towels, but the school certainly wouldn't be expected to provide them to all pupils as a matter of course. We were an all-female school, in a rough area in London, with pupils from all backgrounds including very poor ones, yet nobody was absent due to not having sanitary protection.

    So what has changed between then and now?

    How do you know nobody was absent for that reason? It's not likely that anyone would admit to it.
  • thorsoak
    thorsoak Posts: 7,166
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    Look : when I started school in 1947, at age 4, we had to ask the teacher for toilet paper! In front of the whole class "please Mrs Thomas may I have the paper please"! I still remember how embarrassed that made me feel - so embarrassed that I would take paper from home so that I wouldn't have to ask. School toilet paper was horrible - scratchy, Izal paper - not at all soft you could use it as tracing paper - in fact tracing paper was probably softer.

    Now, it would be considered cause for complaint if there was no loo roll in each and every loo. So why should we be quibbling about sanitary protection for young girls - and they can be as young as 8 or 9 today. Or do you think that parents should go back to providing toilet paper?
  • annandale
    annandale Posts: 1,469 Forumite
    Being poor is not always down to crap parenting. Is it? Is jack monroe a crap parent for example. Just because she lived below the poverty line for a time?

    There will be times girls are caught short. With the best will in the world women don’t always walk around with pads or tampons in their bag just incase their period starts.

    If there are families who rely on holiday clubs to feed their kids and have to rely on uniform banks then they might not have that spare 23p just when they need them.

    As before I spent a lot more than 23p in my time. I would be paying 2.99 for super tampons and I would be on my second box by the time my period ended.
  • annandale
    annandale Posts: 1,469 Forumite
    There are some excellent parents who live below the line. Danielle rowley said that she needed pads. Tampons. And night pads. She probably spent 10 pounds a week. Not 23p.

    She’s an mp on 74k a week. It’s easier for her.

    Please don’t quote the pads are 23p argument when talking about periods. Not all women or girls are the same.

    In my teens I had to wear tampons and pads. Daily.
  • annandale
    annandale Posts: 1,469 Forumite
    And as for the that’s what child benefit is for argument. Some families might be living on the bare bones. The less poor families have to pay out for essentials the better.

    However. Pads and tampons should be free for all women. They are essentials. No one chooses to have periods. And no one should be in period poverty
  • phryne wrote: »
    I remember when we were at school (1980s) you could go to the office if you had an emergency need for sanitary towels, but the school certainly wouldn't be expected to provide them to all pupils as a matter of course. We were an all-female school, in a rough area in London, with pupils from all backgrounds including very poor ones, yet nobody was absent due to not having sanitary protection.

    So what has changed between then and now?
    This is the very question that needs to be answered yet I don't think the answer is a simple one but a combination of reasons.


    They'd be absent due to 'headaches' or 'stomachache' (attendance was less closely monitored then compared to now) or in the toilets making makeshift pads from wodges of toilet paper, rather than going to the office and asking publicly for a pad - particularly in coeducational schools, as it was common for boys to grab girls' bags and rifle through them in search of such 'horrors' as sanitary towels - and if they found tampons, they'd make idiotic comments about how the girl couldn't be a virgin as a result.

    In the case of one of my classmates, she, like many others, had to hope and pray that she wasn't too heavy that the toilet roll was insufficient or it fell out. Unfortunately, she was caught out when there was a fire alarm - she had to stand outside for 20 minutes with a large dark stain on her skirt and it was only when it began running down her legs that the staff did anything about it, at which point, she'd endured the eyes of up to 1,250 other kids, comments from both boys and girls and a complete absence of sympathy from her female teacher, despite it actually being due to her being so heavy that the pads she had been provided with from home to not last more than about an hour each - it took a senior male teacher in his late 50s to make the decision to take her inside and get her another pad from the office, whether the Fire Brigade, staff or Head liked it or not.

    She was usually absent for two days each month afterwards.
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  • dontone
    dontone Posts: 4,871
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    edited 16 September 2018 at 11:31AM
    They'd be absent due to 'headaches' or 'stomachache' (attendance was less closely monitored then compared to now) or in the toilets making makeshift pads from wodges of toilet paper, rather than going to the office and asking publicly for a pad - particularly in coeducational schools, as it was common for boys to grab girls' bags and rifle through them in search of such 'horrors' as sanitary towels - and if they found tampons, they'd make idiotic comments about how the girl couldn't be a virgin as a result.

    We had to put up with that too. It was quite embarrassing when it shouldn't have been. What didn't help was that we used to have a nurse come to school and educate girls on periods, sanitary protection as well, including the virgin/tampon myth. It would have been better if the lads were involved in that too, and watch them squirm.
    There was also a girl who was obsessed with periods to the point of weirdness. I remember going into the cubicle, and she noticed I had a wrapped towel in my hand. she, and a few others that she got to do it with her, peered over the cubicle to see what I was doing. It was mortifying. Luckily a friend of mine came in to the room and watched the cubicle while I sorted myself out. It turned out that she was a late starter, and was jealous that I had got my periods, and she and others hadn't. She was welcome to them.
    We weren't even allowed to leave the classroom should the worst happen, and if we needed emergency protection, the nurse would charge you 20p for an item.
    I would have thought that times would have been easier for girls now, it seems that with missing school due to not having adequate protection, & 'period poverty' I was wrong.
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  • phryne wrote: »
    I remember when we were at school (1980s) you could go to the office if you had an emergency need for sanitary towels, but the school certainly wouldn't be expected to provide them to all pupils as a matter of course. We were an all-female school, in a rough area in London, with pupils from all backgrounds including very poor ones, yet nobody was absent due to not having sanitary protection.

    So what has changed between then and now?

    How do you know?
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