As advocates push for free menstrual products, Bay Area cities are listening

A movement to get free menstrual products into public restrooms across California is gaining steam in the Bay Area as public officials push to make tampons and pads as common as toilet paper.

Legislators in the Assembly Education Committee last week unanimously agreed to move forward with the Menstrual Equity for All Act, a bill introduced by Assembly member Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, that would require schools with grades 6-12, community colleges, state universities and state and local buildings to stock public restrooms with free menstrual products.

The bill aims to bolster previous legislation that required school districts in low-income communities to provide menstrual products for their students. Garcia said her efforts are meant to end the gap for all people who menstruate, not just those who are low-income.

“Our biology doesn’t always send an advanced warning when we’re about to start menstruating, which often means we need to stop whatever we’re doing and deal with a period,” Garcia said in a statement. “Having convenient and free access to these products means our period won’t prevent us from being productive members of society, and would alleviate the anxiety of trying to find a product when out in public.”

But while legislators get ready to continue debating the bill, advocates like UC Davis student Audin Leung, co-founder of statewide student-led organization Free the Period, have been working for several years to lobby Bay Area local officials for free period products in all restrooms — and they’ve got some wins to show for it.

Santa Clara County announced in December it would allocate $1 million to get period products in its government building women’s restrooms, and last week it voted to expand that to men’s restrooms as well.

“Not all those who menstruate are women, and not all women menstruate,” Leung said in an interview Wednesday, explaining that trans men who still menstruate are a key demographic also needing free access to menstrual products but have been ignored in the past.

Also, cities and school districts up and down the Bay Area are either planning to provide free period products or already have done so as pressure builds from largely student groups.

Leung said it’s all part of an effort to end “period poverty,” a global issue affecting menstruators who don’t have access to safe and hygienic sanitary products and are unable to manage their periods.

“There is this assumed responsibility that all menstruators have to be carrying menstrual products on them at all times,” Leung said. “That’s an unfair responsibility for menstruators to have, and a financial burden, too.”

Leung says research shows that not being able to get period products at the right time “causes a big barrier” for menstruators as they navigate through their everyday lives.

In a survey at UC Davis, more than 50% of students who responded said they missed class or work at least once in the 2017-18 school year because of a lack of access to menstrual products, and at UC Berkeley it’s about 43%.

Leung said they know of low income people who say “they have to choose between using the couple dollars they have for lunch to get menstrual products.” They started advocating for free period products when her friend Annie Wong got her period in the middle of a class and couldn’t find a menstrual product.

“She liked to say she left her mark on UC Davis in a way she didn’t intend to,” Leung said. “This is something that half of our students who menstruate are experiencing.”

For Leung, legislation to get period products in all restrooms is “obvious” and they’re asking people to sign a petition in support of menstrual products in California restrooms.

“The urgent need for free, accessible period products is clear,” the petition says.

Spurred to advocate for free period products after reading an NPR article, Mountain View resident Tim MacKenzie has been working with others to push for municipalities to offer free menstrual products in all their facilities’ restrooms.

In just a few months of advocating, MacKenzie and others have gotten responses from several Peninsula and South Bay communities who want to do more.

“Some cities have responded really positively,” MacKenzie said. “Part of the hope is that it will expand. It’s hard to envision that anyone would be against this idea. It’s a no-brainer.”

In Mountain View, where MacKenzie focused most of his effort, the city started a pilot program in 2019 to provide free products for staff in women’s restrooms.

Public Works Director Dawn Cameron said in an email that at the same time, another project was started to provide free period products in the women’s public restrooms at City Hall and monitor usage and cost.

Though the pilot was interrupted by COVID-19, Cameron said the city will be “moving forward with providing free period products in the women’s restrooms in the city’s public buildings.”

“These public restrooms already have vending machines that can be used to dispense products to the public, and we will be converting them so that these products are available at no cost,” Cameron said. “We expect to have this in place by the time these buildings are re-opened to the public.”

Menlo Park Councilwoman Jen Wolosin said access to menstrual products is a real issue for women and girls in underprivileged neighborhoods of her city.

As the city aims to rebuild the community center in Belle Haven — at the center of its predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood — providing period products there will be a key part of designing the new space.

“It’s something worth exploring,” Wolosin said. “As any woman or girl can attest, it’s costly to manage a period, especially for our communities that don’t have access to as many resources.”

Wolosin also said she’s encouraged that a wider conversation about period products will remove the stigma of menstruation in society.

“This is a necessity of life,” Wolosin said.