Period Products: On the Ball
- Beth Pritchard
- Feb 29, 2020
- 2 min read
Period products are now available for free at over 100 football clubs around the UK.
Women on the Bench looked beyond women’s football and into the experiences of female fans of the men’s and women’s games.
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The project - called On the Ball - was kicked off by three female Celtic fans. Their own club was the first to provide free products but an abundance of others around the country were quick to follow suit.
This scheme began in May 2018 to help combat period poverty in a male-dominated environment. With more and more women attending football matches, the pioneers of the project wanted to see clubs be more inclusive.
The group have been met with a lot of praise online as well as support from Jeane Freeman. The SNP member and former Secretary for Health and Sport for the Scottish Government spoke publicly about their goals.
The trio - Erin Slaven, Orlaith Duffy and Mikaela McKinley - focused on four main campaign aims:
to get clubs to provide free period products
increase the visibility and voice of female fans
remove the stigma around periods
raise awareness of period poverty.
On the On the Ball website, they wrote: “We believe that period products should be free and accessible everywhere - just like toilet roll and soap. As football fans, football felt like a natural place for us to kick off some change. Period poverty is an issue that many are facing and we wanted to use football as a platform to highlight this.”
A 2017 survey by Plan International found that as many as one in 10 girls and women aged between 14 and 21 in the UK were unable to afford sanitary products.
The group has even managed to spread their campaign beyond the UK, reaching LA Galaxy, Altonear FC and SPVGG Fürth in Germany, and Sport Club do Recife in Brazil.
Have your say
Does your local club have free period products in the toilets?
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