Menstrual and Gynaecological Health

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the teaching of menstrual and gynaecological health in certain educational settings; to provide for training, guidance and resources to support such teaching; to provide that training includes content about awareness of racial discrimination in menstrual and gynaecological health; to require the Secretary of State to take steps to increase public understanding of menstrual and gynaecological health, including measures to counter inaccurate or misleading information online relating to menstrual and gynaecological health; and for connected purposes.

In this Bill, I am addressing one aspect of women’s health: menstrual health. Menstrual health is surrounded by misinformation, fear and a failure to support millions of women and girls. For women who menstruate, their experience of asking for advice or even medical treatment is routinely dismal—ask any woman from their school days onwards. It is a nightmare of stigma, shame and a failure of the NHS to help. The recent Women and Equalities Committee report states:

“Stigma around menstruation, sex, fertility and childlessness is a barrier to discussion of reproductive ill health. It contributes to delays in diagnosis and treatment, and can lead women and girls to turn to online forums to self-diagnose or to avoid seeking treatment altogether.”

That self-diagnosis can be misguided and dangerous, fed by dubious online claims and fake cures. The internet is not a safe place for clear expert advice for girls and women wanting to know about their periods and menstrual health.

A poll commissioned by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists found that more than half—53%—of women in the UK who had experienced symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction did not seek help from a healthcare professional. One in five—21%—felt too embarrassed to seek support. In 2018, a YouGov poll found that period shaming happens at home, in the workplace and at school in the UK.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists further noted:

“There is an immense societal pressure on women and girls to conceal their periods due to beliefs that menstruation is unhygienic or unclean, and talking openly about periods is often not considered as a social norm.”

We live in a modern-day society with an openness to addressing all manner of health issues, including mental health, yet talking about menstrual health remains stigmatised, shrouded in shame, embarrassment and the frankly medieval attitudes held by many.

In the call for evidence for the women’s health strategy, 29% of respondents said that they did not feel comfortable talking to healthcare professionals about gynaecological conditions. For teenage girls aged 16 and 17, that figure rose to 40%. Those shocking figures show that this stigma has real-world consequences for women’s health. Women and girls get the wrong advice, dangerous advice or no advice. Their shame means that their conditions and diseases are not diagnosed. Sadly, conditions such as endometriosis, adenomyosis, fibroids, polycystic ovary syndrome, pelvic inflammatory disease, pelvic organ prolapse and ovarian cysts are far too often missed, leaving many women to endure years of unnecessary pain.

The time to receive a diagnosis of endometriosis has actually gone up, not down, with women waiting on average nine years and four months. For women of colour and women from other ethnic minority backgrounds, the average wait for diagnosis is 11 years. We might wonder, “Why are women of colour waiting longer?” Well, I am afraid to say that we suffer discrimination in the health system. Our pain is dismissed and our concerns are ignored. Well-documented bias is embedded in the NHS when it comes to black women’s health, leading to poorer outcomes and terrible experiences for so many women.

We must address the cultural assumptions in some communities that tell girls that periods are a punishment, dirty, something to be ashamed of or something to be kept as a secret. A dangerous cocktail of misogyny, misinformation and myth is leading to girls and women being misinformed, mistreated and misdiagnosed. My Bill aims to tackle that stigma and get society talking about periods and menstrual health. Let us smash the stigma, starting in schools, with teachers being well-equipped to support their pupils. No schoolgirl should suffer in silence.

Let us use the roll-out of more diagnostic hubs and the shift to more community-based preventive care to raise awareness about menstrual health. We need more public awareness campaigns, on the same scale as the NHS sepsis campaign, for not just the public, but medical professionals from the very start of their careers. Every doctor needs proper training in menstrual health to spot endometriosis, fibroids and other gynaecological conditions early; to give proper advice to their patients; to debunk online myths and misinformation; and to be aware of and tackle racial bias in the healthcare system.

We need every employer to be aware of menstrual health, to have proper systems of support in place in the workplace, to have period products available for free, and to recognise that if a woman needs time off because of their blinding pain, they are not making it up. I welcome the work of the TUC and the trade unions in this area.

We also need to have more difficult conversations. We need more men squirming in their seats as we discuss our periods, our bleeding and our pain, and we need to stop talking in euphemisms—all those silly little terms about periods that disguise the reality and stop an open conversation. We need not only more women’s voices to be heard, but women to be actively leading the design and delivery of the healthcare system. The NHS must no longer be male by default. I speak to so many women and girls who have been let down and whose mental and physical health have been damaged. This must stop.

The upcoming women’s health strategy must be more than a document; it must be a manifesto for revolutionary change—what is the point of it otherwise? There must be no more girls crying in changing rooms, no more workers hiding in toilets, and no more shame.

That Ms Abena Oppong-Asare, Marsha De Cordova, Olly Glover, Paulette Hamilton, Carolyn Harris, Christine Jardine, Tulip Siddiq, Valerie Vaz, Gill Furniss, Kirsteen Sullivan, Simon Hoare and Sir Alec Shelbrooke present the Bill.

Ms Abena Oppong-Asare accordingly presented the Bill.