Period. End of Sentence.’s win brings period poverty into the limelight

The documentary has become a starting point of discussion for menstrual advocacy groups in the United States, including the one at Emerson.

Period. End of Sentence. won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short during the 91st Academy Awards on Feb. 24. The 26-minute film follows a group of women in India who manufacture affordable pads for their village. It touches on the stigma of menstruation in India and documents the team’s journey to make feminine products that are more accessible to their peers.

The documentary was directed by Rayka Zehtabchi and produced by Guneet Monga. Initial funding for the film was initiated by a group of students from Oakwood High school in Los Angeles who have since started the nonprofit, The Pad Project. The Pad Project’s mission is to destigmatize menstruation and combat period poverty, which is the lack of access to feminine hygiene products because of financial status. 

Period. End of Sentence. was one way that the students sought to spread awareness about menstrual product accessibility and social taboos surrounding periods internationally. Now that the documentary is finished, they are focusing their efforts towards fundraising for more pad manufacturing machines to send to other developing communities around the world. 

Period poverty does not just affect women abroad, however; it is also a domestic issue. 

One in five American girls has missed school because of a lack of access to period products, according to a survey conducted by the pad brand Always. PERIOD, another period advocacy group and one of the biggest in the U.S., has launched a campaign to end period poverty in schools.

PERIOD has over 300 chapters in high schools and colleges around the country. Their goal is to ensure that access to menstrual products is available to all students from primary school to college. Emerson College’s PERIOD chapter was founded in 2017. 

PERIOD Emerson and the sorority Sigma Pi Theta held an event called “Period Talk!” on March 12 and screened Period. End of Sentence to kick off the night.

The rest of the event focused around raising awareness about period poverty, discussing the stigma around menstruation, and gathering period products to donate to St. Francis House, the homeless shelter near Emerson. Grace Griffin, member of Sigma Pi Theta, attended the event and said that the documentary started the discussion around periods.

“We discussed access. We discussed taboos around [periods]. Most of the people that were at the event, no matter how they identified gender-wise, were comfortable talking about periods. It was such a vast difference between that and what we saw in the documentary. We discussed that a lot and how shocking it was to see how taboo and how stigmatized talking about periods was,” she said.

While menstruation talk is more accepted in the U.S. than India, there is still a stigma around talking about menstruation in the United States, according to Griffin.

“I think there is a taboo, a little bit, because people are like ‘I don’t want to hear about it, that’s your own personal thing’ when it’s an issue that a lot of people face. Not talking about it is just kind of weird, it’s just like anything else that someone’s body does. So I don’t think it should be as stigmatized as it is,” she said.

“Period Talk!” was a part of Sigma Pi Theta’s Herstory month, a series of events that seek to empower young women. Herstory month is held every March in order to celebrate Women’s History Month.