More than half of the women surveyed in a study carried out by a team from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) and the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) say they did not know how to physically manage the first time their period came down. This work, published in the BMC Women’s Health magazine, analyzes the information received on menstruation, the desired information and the information that has the greatest impact on how menstruation is experienced, and confirms that menstrual education in Spain is still deficient.
“Menstruation continues to be treated as an uncomfortable subject that must be hidden and what is hidden is not talked about, not investigated, not legislated for and does not receive the necessary attention. But menstrual health requires that attention,” says Sara Sánchez López, a researcher at the INGENIO Institute, a joint center of the UPV and the CSIC, and lead author of the study.
The study was carried out through an anonymous online questionnaire to more than 4,000 people, both men and women born or residing in Spain, carried out between May 2021 and January 2022. The questions addressed topics such as the education received about menstruation , the comfort with which the subject is discussed, emotions experienced during menarche, menstrual hygiene products, economic impact and social impact, among others.
And their results are revealing: the four most common emotions reported during the first menstruation were shame (23%), worry (20%), fear (16%), and stress (15%).
The study also reveals that 35.7% of the women surveyed did not know very well what their period was when it came down for the first time and 56.1% did not know enough about how to proceed. On the other hand, there are numerous testimonies collected in this work in which menstruation has been the cause of ridicule or derogatory comments.
The study also found a trend between the information available on how to manage bleeding and the number of times that you remember having experienced shame, fear, worry and disgust, which suggests that knowing what to do when you have your first period reduces the possibility of experience these emotions. “Unfortunately, only 5% of the people surveyed remember having received this information at school,” says Sara Sánchez López.
On the other hand, the data indicate that despite all the social changes that have occurred in these decades, the emotions experienced during the first menstruation in Spain have not changed significantly from the 1950s to the early 2000s.
“The ambiguity of current legislation in terms of content on menstruation leaves the center or even the teacher at the discretion of how much time to dedicate to the subject and what content to include. And, often, it is merely named in its biological function as part of human reproduction”, says Rocío Poveda Bautista, also a researcher at INGENIO and co-author of the study.
But the lack of information is not reduced to the first rule. This study shows the need for reliable and accessible information on how to manage menstrual pain, symptoms of endometriosis and other similar disorders, or when to see a specialist. In general, he concludes that more knowledge is needed about how the menstrual cycle affects the whole body and how it varies throughout life, including menopause.
“This study aims to serve as guidance for the creation of efficient legislative and social measures. It is a call to action so that education on menstrual health, deficient today, is incorporated into the curriculum, to guarantee that every person enrolled in Spain receives basic and reliable information on this subject”, concludes Santiago Moll López, from the department of Applied Mathematics of the Polytechnic University of Valencia and co-author of the study.
Together with researchers from the UPV and the CSIC, this study has also had the valuable contribution of Dr. Dani Barrington from the University of Western Australia, an internationally recognized expert for her research and activism on menstrual health.
Reference
Sanchez Lopez, S., Barrington, D.J., Poveda Bautista, R. and S.E., Moll Lopez. Spanish menstrual literacy and experiences of menstruation. BMC Women’s Health 23, 161 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-023-02293-4
