ESOMAR Insights Festival: ‘Making a Difference Award’
We are very pleased to be announced as winners at the ESOMAR Insights Festival for the ‘Making a Difference Award’ with Plan International UK – Period poverty and its effect on young women.
We have worked with Plan International over a number of years on their campaign to end period poverty. For millions of people everywhere, periods are simply a part of life, but around the world, including here in the UK, they continue to be surrounded by shame, stigma and taboo.
This research programme has been at the forefront of understanding the issues young girls in the UK face. The Break the Barriers policy report was the first-of-its-kind report into period poverty and stigma in the UK.
From the research it was evident that girls are facing real challenges with their periods, from stigmas and shame, accessibility and affordability to health risks and missing education. To bring this to life we found:
Further to this, this research programme has changed the narrative in the UK by quantifying the extent of period poverty and its impact, and influenced policy makers and other key organisations to introduce policy changes that tackle the issue of period poverty:
- The Department for Education introduced compulsory teaching about menstruation from 2020 as part of the new sex education curriculum
- The UK Government is now providing free period products in schools
- The Royal College of GPs reviewed their guidance around menstrual wellbeing after seeing the research on girls not speaking to medical professionals about period symptoms because of their embarrassment
- Unicode, the emoji consortium, accepted our submission of a blood drop emoji (in conjunction with the NHS) in 2019 and are available now on smartphones
To get a copy of the ESOAMR Insights Festival awards event, please follow this link.
Check out the full recording from the festival here:
