To not accept that there is 'period poverty' in the UK.....?

[rosetree7]

Fully expecting to be told I am BU, but I genuinely do not get this 'period poverty' malarkey.

Some reports say periods cost £42-45 a month (£500 a year.) Never in my life have I - or anyone else I know - spent £42-45 a MONTH on their period. Not even a tenth of that actually.

Some of the things they (supposedly) spend money on are tampons and STs (obviously...) You can get a pack of sanitary towels for less than a pound. Less than 50p in some shops!

And also mooncups.

Although mooncups cost £16 to £22, most mooncups will last 10 years, so you'd only buy 3 or 4 in your lifetime!!! And they also spend on pain relief - but paracetamol and ibuprofen are 16 to 26p a packet from Wilkos. And plenty of other shops sell them for a similar price!

Oh and apparently, they have to keep spending money on new underwear every month. What a load of shit.. I have bought 18 pairs of underpants in 5 years, (at a cost of around £25 for the entire 5 years!) 5 pairs of them are dark coloured - and I wear them for my periods. Never in my life have I bought new underpants for every new period.

So what is this all about? And how on earth are they coming up with such a ludicrous figure as £42-45 a month?! I mean, some girls are apparently using toilet roll as they 'can't afford' sanitary towels? In most cases, toilet roll is more expensive than sanitary towels FGS!

CAB reckons £680 to go bankrupt DownstairsMixUp. But you can pay in as many installments as you like with a minimum of each being a fiver. Gotta love google.

The cost of going bankrupt is more than my childcare bill was each month by £30. I was even too poor to declare myself financially fucked

@Cathf is right.

But there are too many warriors shouting people down. Some come on for a debate but get pounced on, ridiculed and abused, At least 6 pounced on Cathf just like lions waiting for kill, and getting super excited when someone has a different point of view. The result is most people leave the thread or avoid these kinds of thread in the first place due to not being able to debate and exchange views.

Then posters start with the flowers, saying how brave and courageous they are and fawning over each other.

When they finally kill off the thread it's onto the next.

Left wing socialists at best, trolls at the worst.

Some come on for a debate but get pounced on, ridiculed and abused

“No such thing as period poverty” is a fairly ridiculous point of view.

I don't expect sympathy, which is just as well as clearly thinking against the hive mentality means you don't get any
Not really interested in adding to the competitive poverty posts tbh, other than to say none of them apart from the imaginary PIP woman or the imaginary financial abuse victim sound that alien to me.
And before anyone jumps on me with millions of links to articles, I know these situations exist, but they are not the reason the majority of woman supposedly cannot budget to buy sanpro

In your opinion Jacques, but not in mine. You do realise your opinion isn't fact, I take it?

I know these situations exist, but they are not the reason the majority of woman supposedly cannot budget to buy sanpro

So what is the reason then?

In your opinion Jacques, but not in mine. You do realise your opinion isn't fact, I take it?

I work with Red Box. They’re seeing period poverty every day. The report on secondary schools in the locality is frightening when you see the number of girls who are missing school due to period poverty.

Coupled with the percentage of pupils in the LEA who receive pupil premium, who can’t afford to feed their kids.

Poor budgeting, in a nutshell

Who said the majority of women can’t budget for san pro? The population of the UK is c60m. Let’s assume 15m are menstruating women. If 10% are in poverty that would still be 1.5m women potentially struggling.
Even if the figure is 1m or 0.5m. It’s still a hell of a lot of potential women suffering

Poor fucking government making folk wait weeks for a pittance not poor budgeting, it's hard to budget nothing isn't it

To be honest, the £500 figure is a bit of a red herring. The point isn’t whether it costs £50 or £500, it’s that there are people for whom this is an insurmountable amount of money. Yes, ‘most’ people can afford sanitary protection, but that doesn’t do anything to help those who can’t. ‘Most’ people can afford food, but it’s still shocking that some can’t. It’s about maintaining human empathy and dignity for fucks sake 😡😡😡

cathf is not right. I've recounted my personal experience several times. Some of us are more in debt every month (we're not now, thankfully, just to put food on the table). I also don't need sanpro anymore, but DD will very soon.

there are national gains to be had from supporting young girls/women, these are the people who will be doing the jobs and paying the taxes that will fund future services like pensions, NHS, councils and so on...Having to stay home because of lack of sanpro or being so anxious about it, they can't concentrate at school/work is a hindrance to their current/future achievement. They are more than worth the investment of a few sanitary towels surely

What a load of nonsense, we've seen with tax credits etc the effects of giving free things to people. It's created a whole host of work shy people.

Education is the key to girls having successful futures. If their parents are not providing the basics, it's gong to take more than a few freebies to ensure they are successful in adult life.

Not every girl is going to be a future tax payer, just look at how many women don't work.

That should have been

(we're not now thankfully), just to put food on the table.

I adore the notion that opinion, when shouted loud enough, should be taken as fact. Yes, let's ignore the statistics, the first hand stories. Anyone who has no money left over is shit at budgeting. And cathf is such a martyr with her low income she is going to tell us exactly where we all went wrong. I mean, if you only earn £1000 a month you clearly have your priorities in piss poor order if £2 is out of reach...

Here’s a question if it “doesn’t exist”... why would anyone lie about this? In the hope that the government might introduce a benefit giving them an extra £2 a month for sanitary towels? Seems an extreme way to go about getting two quid.

How do working tax credits make people work shy?

How the fuck do workshy folk earn working tax credits?? Please do fill me in on this gem

@Dottie, your Telegraph link had nothing to so with periods or blood,
it was about unwashed bedding.

Please stop dramatising everything and trying to find tenuous links.

Cathf, is your bankruptcy down to poor budgeting?

You have to have enough money to budget with in the first place cathf. We earnt too much money to qualify for benefits, but not enough to pay the rent, bills, prescriptions, glasses, dental treatment, clothes, food, cleaning products etc. WE WERE LIVING ON MARMITE ON TOAST! No FSM for the DC as we didn't qualify.

just look at how many women don't work.

And are at home performing the tasks of childcare professionals, for nothing, without holiday pay or pensions.

I don't understand why so many posters are refusing to accept there is such a thing as 'period poverty'. You're probably right that most households probably have the financial resources to cover the cost of STs/tampons. But you only need to read the threads on the Relationships board about financial abuse, where women and girls can't access those resources.

I agree with CathF. Benefits allow for a good standard of living, you can do an AS on here and see that people actively choose to claim them.

There's no excuse to not provide a child with the basics. If things are that dire then surely sitting back and doing nothing isn't the standard response. You'd be making every effort to do whatever it took to gain more work to ensure a child didn't go without. If a parent won't, then what does that say? Far better to tackle parents who won't step up then paper over the cracks with free products.

There's always a myriad of excuses. Childcare is too much, there's no point in working or doing extra as they will just offset my wage against benefits etc or I have children so can't possibly be expected to work. Children just don't appear and it doesn't take much to work out the costs of having one yet so many don't even bother to think of the consequences. Relationship stats aren't good, so why have numerous children in one knowing full well if the stats are true and it doesn't last you have no means of supporting them. Not hard to make sensible decisions.

Benefits allow for a good standard of living

I had to live on benefits for five months and it was not a good standard of living, piss off with that.