Catching up with the UNB Menstrual Health Society: Prestigious awards and feats in fighting stigma
Published in The NB Media Co-op*
(*artwork: Cycles by Incé Husain)
Last year, the UNB Menstrual Health Society was established by UNB students Kate Palmer and Caroline Stephen with the vision of making period products available in UNB campus washrooms and alleviating the stigma around menstruation.
Now, the Society has grown to over a hundred members, formed community partnerships, embarked on giving talks to schools about menstrual products and period stigma, and won a prestigious award from the government of New Brunswick.
Kate Palmer, a 3rd year psychology student and co-chair of the Society, discusses the Society’s feats and how her understandings of period stigma have deepened.
“We’ve definitely done a lot in this short time!” says Palmer.
She explains that membership has extended from UNB students to community volunteers who sustain the Society. Thirty volunteers ensure that the period product dispensers on campus are filled on a weekly basis, while others take on initiatives that are communicated on the Society’s online platform throughout the year. The executive team plans initiatives biweekly and meets with the full Society each semester to provide updates.
“It’s hard to say the set number (of volunteers), but we have so many and that’s what kind of keeps it afloat,” says Palmer. “When you finally get in contact with the right people and get people talking about (the Society), it becomes this whole community.”
While most members are women, Palmer says that some men are involved in the Society too. She says that this sets a precedent for more men to join the Society in future, and considers their involvement to be a step in itself in reducing period stigma.
“We make a point of mentioning (that men are members),” says Palmer. “Even just being able to include that in our presentations and just in conversation has already made an impact.”
The Society has established partnerships with the Fredericton Downtown Community Health Center, Liberty Lane, Grace House, and the Multicultural Association of Fredericton, expanding the Society’s reach and allowing it to function as a charity. Community events have been held to collect funds, hygiene products, and other necessities for these organizations. These include a Zumba event at the Currie center and a Cellar Trivia at the student union building; participants donated cash or period products.
The partnerships also helped build cross-cultural understandings of period stigma. Palmer shares that the Society set up a booth about menstrual products at a fair held by the Multicultural Association of Fredericton; she learned that some communities who were new to Canada weren’t familiar with period products, their costs, or discussions around menstruation. For Palmer, these experiences showed how varied stigmatization can be.
“The comment that kept coming up was “you’re just talking about (menstruation), you have a society about this?” It just reinforced how different and how stigmatized it is,” says Palmer. “In a lot of different cultures you can’t go out and buy products, you have to find your own way to handle it… we were talking about different prices of products, and just kind of talking about it (generally). And you could tell how much they appreciated it, and how much of a happy surprise it was.”
Understandings of period stigma were also built by speaking at schools about menstruation. Palmer shares that the Society visited École Sainte Anne, Devon Middle School, and Nashwaaksis Middle School to give talks on what a period is, the inaccessibility of period products, and how menstruation is stigmatized. The goal was to shed light on aspects of menstruation that, according to Palmer, are not taught in schools. Some students seemed enthusiastic during the talks while others looked wary, conveying how students may experience stigma differently.
She describes the talks as “very open conversations” where students could ask questions and guide the discussion, with the presentation content shifting to accommodate the age group. Students were also given the option of writing their thoughts and questions on pieces of paper instead of speaking aloud.
“Every presentation is completely different. It’s not as much like teaching as much as it is feeding off their energy and seeing what they need more of or less of to make sure everyone really gets the same understanding,” says Palmer. “I think we made it a really comfortable environment for questions to be asked.”
The students ranged from grade 6 to grade 9. She says the talks given to grade 9 students at École Sainte Anne were “very interactive”. Talks to grade 8 students at Devon Middle school were marked by an equal amount of questions from male and female students, with Palmer sharing that some boys were hearing about what a period was for the first time and inspired some “serious conversations”. The grade 6 students at Nashwaaksis Middle School would just “burst out” with questions, their eyes widening and their faces lighting up.
“There were just amazing questions because… it showed how much they were missing from school and from knowledge,” says Palmer. “You can kind of see the impact there, which was awesome.”
The stigma around menstruation was conveyed to the students by first defining stigma as a social stereotype or taboo, and then sharing that menstruation is seen as “gross” and is seldom discussed. The talks also opened with stats that illustrated the extent of period product inaccessibility, which demonstrated the effects of stigma on a practical societal level.
“A lot of students had never heard the word “stigma”,” says Palmer. “We were trying to reduce that shame and that secretive nature around it.”
Palmer’s personal understandings of period stigma revolve around the lack of dialogue about menstruation and the societal secrecy surrounding it, which collectively prevent menstruation from being accepted as a practical experience. She envisions a world without period stigma as one where menstrual products are available in every washroom.
“To me, (the stigma is) not only a lack of conversation or a disregard or a sensitivity to the topic of menstruation, but also just… thinking that it’s some magical, mysterious, private thing, talking about it in that way and trying to hide it,” says Palmer. “I think definitely, without menstrual stigma there would be menstrual products in every single bathroom you would ever find. It seems crazy that there aren’t.”
On March 8th - International Women’s Day - the government of New Brunswick presented Kate Palmer and Caroline Stephen with the 2023 Youth Champions VIVE Awards for the Minister's Award for Excellence in Championing Gender Equality. They had applied for the award around Christmas time, detailing the Society’s goals, achievements, and how rapidly membership is growing.
“(The award) is really, really exciting,” says Palmer. “It will be great - it will almost increase our credibility.”
Palmer emphasizes that the Society volunteers and community supporters are integral to how it is thriving.
“I feel like we have met so many wonderful people throughout this,” says Palmer. “Before that I didn’t know all these people and now I feel like it's nice to just have that community and have so many people on board.” ♦
*This article was amalgamated with the piece “How the Menstrual Health Society is Destigmatizing Menstruation, Period.” for publication in the NB Media Co-op on April 3rd, 2023: