The average menstruating person spends about $20 on period products per cycle, totaling about $18,000 over their lifetime. Period poverty is a term used to describe when people cannot afford the menstrual products they need for their cycle in which insecurity is structurally rooted within systems of inequity and oppression. Period poverty is compounded by the pink tax, which categorizes tampons, pads, and diva cups as luxury items subject to tax and excludes them from purchasing with welfare benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Cultural taboos and stigma frame menstruation as an unsanitary narrative that works to remove menstrual equity from the perception of general wellness, reflected in the symbolic on-campus menstrual product dispensers that are mounted yet remain empty.
On campus, the disproportionate ratio of men’s to women’s restrooms on campus doesn’t go unnoticed by the 30% of Stevens’ female-identifying student body and calls into question how many and how often menstrual product dispensers are stocked. While all-gender restrooms align with inclusivity, they represent “quick fixes” to a historic record of gender imbalance and lingering disparity 50 years after Stevens admitted the first 19 women out of 387 students in the class of 1971. Among the women’s and all-gender single-serve restrooms on campus, the buildings Morton, Burchard, Edwin A. Stevens, and the UCC were stocked with products in at least one restroom.
Frank LoCastro, Assistant Vice President for Facilities and Campus Operations, comments on facility efforts to create spaces for female-identifying students, noting that all designated women’s single-serve restrooms were converted to become gender-inclusive per Hoboken mandate. “We were well-balanced with several single occupancy toilets having been created and dedicated to women as the female population on campus grew,” he says. In response Stevens converted male toilets in Morton and Burchard to female with the addition of more gender-neutral restrooms. While addressing the upkeep and stocking of restroom menstrual products, LoCastro says, “The UG2 cleaning services staff restock the dispensers each night. The day cleaning staff also check them for refills during the day while also checking restrooms for paper products and soap refills.”
Residents of the first-year Service and Leadership Living Learning Community (LLC) hosted a menstrual awareness event to raise period products for the Hoboken Community Center and take a campus pulse on period awareness to reduce stigma. As LLC students constructed donation boxes, Olivia Cecchi, Assistant Director of Student Support, Wellness Education, was invited to speak on period poverty and the de-stigmatization of periods. While spreading period awareness, Cecchi emphasizes the importance of language to acknowledge “that not all women menstruate, and not all people who menstruate identify as female,” in working towards period equity, “which means increasing both access to menstrual products and access to reproductive health education and information.”
Dr. Amber Benezra, Service and Leadership LLC Faculty Advisor and Professor of Science Technology and Society Studies, supported the students in coordinating the event with Hoboken Community Center alongside Dean Nilson and the LCC Resident Assistant, Ben Stoll. Benezra emphasized that the driving interest to host a donation event centered on period insecurity came from the LLC students, in which students of all genders were in attendance. Reflecting the deeply structural necessity of period products and resources, Benezra states, “Menstruating people need the space to take care of their periods — it’s not an individual responsibility.”
Period poverty initiatives enter the classrooms as the recent state law, S-1221, passed in August 2023, requires public school districts to provide free menstrual products from grades 6-12 in at least half of the all-female and gender-neutral restrooms. From S-1121, Cecchi anticipates similar legislation at the college level, although the TCNJ student newspaper reports the college administration rejected a Student Government proposal to administer menstrual products in campus restrooms.
As the emotional and physical labor to access menstrual products and resources intersects all genders and social structures, period awareness and efforts to destigmatize menstruation fall on menstruators and non-menstruators alike. “Creating intentional, inclusive, and intersectional dialogues and spaces around these topics is how we dismantle the stigma that surrounds them,” Cecchi says, ”Whether you have a period or not, knowing about the menstrual cycle is something everyone can and should learn about.”
