The Minister of Health Olivier Véran and the Minister Delegate in charge of Equality between men and women Elisabeth Moreno announced on Tuesday an envelope of 5 million euros in the 2021 budget to fight against menstrual insecurity.
5 million euros against menstrual insecurity
The President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron mentioned it for the first time during an interview with Brut on December 4. The term menstrual insecurity refers to the difficulty for some women to access sanitary protection due to financial problems. A phenomenon that concerns 1 in 10 women in France. The executive announced that it would devote 5 million euros of its budget in 2021 against 1 million last year to fight against this scourge. “We are tackling a taboo, denounced by associations and recalled by the President of the Republic. Rules are nothing to be ashamed of. Menstrual precariousness, yes, and it is our collective duty to come to the aid of hundreds of thousands of women who do not have access to menstrual protection and to support the mobilized associations whose daily work I wish to salute. It is both a question of public health and of solidarity! »Declared Olivier Véran, Minister of Solidarity and Health in a press release.
A good start in 2020
Among the experiments carried out in 2020, the Lille academy made hygienic protections available free of charge in more than 40 secondary schools and high schools falling under priority education. Numerous initiatives, such as patrols and day-care centers for sheltered or homeless women, aimed at distributing hygienic protection to women in very precarious situations have also been reinforced. Support also provided by solidarity grocery stores and fundraising actions to enable women to benefit from free menstrual protection. Finally, to meet the needs of women prisoners, “the free distribution of periodic protection, but also the diversification of the range offered to them for purchase, as well as support for menstrual hygiene” was provided.
