Men and menstruation: from bystanders to allies - By Dr Dani Barrington

Kaya, one two. Welcome everyone, good evening, and welcome to Raising the Bar Perth. Tonight we are bringing you insights from 10 incredible academics speaking across five vibrant bars in Perth CBD and Northbridge. My name is Professor Romola Vux, and I'm the Provide Chancellor Health and Medical Research, which is the longest title on the planet, so please just call me Romola. I'm from the University of Western Australia, and it's my absolute pleasure to be your MC for this evening. To start, as is the tradition of the University of Western Australia, I'd like to acknowledge that we are situated on beautiful Wajak Nong Abuja, Wajak Nonga Country, and that the Wajak Nonga people remain the spiritual and cultural custodians of their land, and continue to practice their values, languages, beliefs, and knowledge. At UWA, we are uniting our world-class teaching research and student experiences, and partnering with communities to tackle some of the world's most complex problems. We have an exciting discussion for you this evening, and you'll know down leave here after tonight having learned something interesting. We are recording the talk, so if you'd like to re-listen, to share it with someone else, or to check out the talks you've missed because you can't be in five bars at once, no matter how amazing you all are, they will soon be available on the Raising the Bar website under podcasts, and we will email your registration address with the links when they've gone live. If you're active on social media, please tag @UWAResearch and #RTBPerth, so raising the bar RTB Perth, so we can share your raising the bar moments. Let's dive in and enjoy a night of learning. Tonight, we have the very wonderful Dr. Danny Barrington joining us to share their fascinating research in a talk titled men and menstruation from bystanders to allies. After Danny's spoken, we're going to open the floor for audience questions, so keep those thoughtful questions coming, because this is your chance to dive deeper into this topic. Let me introduce Danny to you. Your speaker for the evening is Dr. Danny Barrington. She began her professional life as a wastewater engineer, but quickly realized that what really interested her was the social side of toilets. She now specialises in participatory research methods that help us understand and improve people's experiences with toilets, menstrual health and incontinence. She's a senior lecturer at the School of Population and Global Health at the University of Western Australia, and Senior Honorary Fellow at the University of Queensland. Dr. Barrington has researched and taught around the world, particularly in Oshiyama, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, so please join me in welcoming Dr. Danny Barrington. Thank you. I've got some friends in the front row, clapping very loudly. Thank you. So, Romela did acknowledge the Wajak people of the Nyunga Nation, but I also wanted to acknowledge today the Punjab people of the Nyunga Nation, who were the victims of the Punjab massacre almost 200 years ago, and that I am pleased to see today that the governor has apologised to those people for that massacre that was inflicted. I'd also like to acknowledge some of my colleagues in this space. So wonderful Lavanya Jera here at the front. She is a master's of public health student in our school during a research project on fathers and menstruation, and also PhD students Sam, Barrow, and Danny Russell, who worked with Lavanya and I a couple of months ago to run a community conversation where we talked to dads from Perth about how they support their adolescent daughters through periods. And now, as Romela alluded to, I did start out as an engineer. So I'm just going to explain my story and how I've come to be here tonight. So my background is as an environmental engineer, and I was mostly working in my PhD around waste water. And I worked in rural areas of Western Australia, so there your waste water plants are essentially massive ponds that the water moves through, stays there for a while, it's treated biologically itself, and then it is released to the environment or to things like irrigating school ovals. And as I was sitting there on a dinghy on what my family called the poo ponds, I was thinking about what happens to this water afterwards, what's the risk assessment in place, how we not concerned about the kids on the school oval that are using this water, where this water is being used. And I got really interested in that side of things. And at the same time, I was doing a lot of volunteer work with engineers without borders here in Australia. So I was doing high school outreach, I was learning a lot about international development, and at the very end of my PhD, the position came up in Nepal, where they wanted somebody who had a wash, water, sanitation, and hygiene engineering background, and also knew something about international development. So I fit perfectly, I got that job, and I went to Nepal for nine months. And when I was there, I started talking to people, and realised that the actual technical side of engineering, particularly in low resource context, is not that tricky. The really hard thing is making sure that people get what it is that they want and need, and they're able to sustain it over a longer period of time. And also because I was a woman in the field, people started talking to me about periods, and how women weren't able to manage them. They didn't necessarily have the products, or the way to dispose of them, or a way to wash whatever cloth they were using. So that's kind of my background of how I got into working around toilets and people, and menstrual health. I've worked in this space since 2011, and I look younger than I am. Yes, and I have seen menstruation go mainstream. So I've seen it go into the Guardian, there's articles ABC, it's all over social media now, and you've probably all seen that there's now billions of dollar wellness industry around menstruation and menopause. But I've also seen that this stigma associated with periods is still there. So I heard from a colleague today that, because there were some tickets left to this presentation, they said, to their office, guys, you should come along. And apparently a few of the men in the office were like, don't look at me. So we still have a way to go. So what I'm going to talk to you about first tonight is some of these unsupported behaviours we see, particularly from non-menstruators, generally men. But it can also be people who have periods, but are in often a patriarchal society, and then reinforcing this stigma onto people who menstruate. So something that people have probably heard about, if you're here tonight, is a practice called Chappaldi in Nepal. It is outlawed now, but it does still happen. And it's something that has gotten a lot of press over the last few years. And that's where when people have their periods, they're not allowed to stay in their home. They have to go to a hut where they stay with the other women and girls from the village until they finish their period. So there's an isolation factor, but there's also a danger factor around things like tigers, Nepal has tigers, snakes, predators of the male, humankind, etc. We also find around the world that there are restrictions placed on people who menstruate in terms of religious places. So when they don't have their period, they might not be allowed to go into a temple or a mosque or a church, that kind of thing. A particular restriction that I have seen in the Solomon Islands was being told by a man that when his wife has her period, he and his son can't use the same toilet as her because then they'll become infertile. And this isn't an informal settlement where she didn't really have any other option. So these kind of misconceptions are still common around the world. We still see examples where particularly older adults believe that when a girl gets her first period, it means that she has started having sex. Or that using a tampon means that you've lost your virginity, which is completely different thing. And we also see a lot of bullying still in schools. Okay, so it might be girls as well during the bullying, but it seems like most of the worry is around boys and what they'll say if they find out I've got my period. Not just have I leaped through and the world I want to be swallowed up by the world, but also can they see I've got a pad on, can they find a pad in my bag? How is this still embarrassing? We also see teachers still. And this was said to me by dads a few weeks ago in Perth that there are still teachers out there who won't let girls go to the bathroom during class. When they might realize, oh, I've started my period, I didn't expect that. As often happens when you're young and also when you're in Peribana pause. And that supports not there. So then they're left to not deal with it or to stand up at the end of class and then feel that shame of having leaped through. Something we're also seeing more of. Has everyone heard of menstrual tracking apps? Yeah. So I think about 10 years ago is when they started as a thing. And there were quite a few social enterprises that developed them and it was about giving women more education about their body, allowing them to track when they had their period but also how they had different symptoms at different times of the month. But we see this policing of women's body that can come with that. So we know in the US where some of these companies aren't so secure in how they keep their data. That when women, for example, have missed a period, the assumption that they might have been pregnant or that if they then get their period later that they might have had an abortion. Like this is seriously stuff that's being used against women. And some of these apps, they have the option to share with your partner, which could be really nice if you have a really supportive partner and they want to know how you're doing it different times of the month and maybe you're a bit worried about talking to them about it. But we do also see stories now of partners kind of using that against women. So oh, well, I've seen that you've got your period. So you must just be being irrational or even worse weaponizing it in terms of oh, I'm going to, there's something I really want to do. So I'm going to plan to do it when I know that I can blame a irrationality on her period. So yeah, that's the kind of thing that happens in high income countries as well. And then we come to traditional and social media. So traditional media, I was literally watching a TV show on the weekend, 2025, where the boyfriend was making fun of, or accusing the 16-year-old girlfriend of having a period because she was being irrational and he could see her tampons during showing. Now you can also see I've got my tampons during showing. Yeah, I'm bringing the tampon back. But that trope of the irrational woman all laughing about girls who leak through their clothing in schools. The fact that that is still a joke in movies is really, really disconcerting to me. On social media, I've heard a lot from my students because I'm old, that there are a lot of influencers now who are talking about you need to not use hormonal contraceptives. You need to not use pain killers. You've got to feel your period. It's going to be all natural and things. And this can be really damaging. There are a whole range of reasons that people use hormonal contraceptives and of course pain killers. And the problem is that we live in a place now where these influencers can have more influence than a doctor, for example. And then my own social media experience. This was my five minutes of fame, my one time in my life I went viral. I saw that a public pool in the UK had put up signs and saying that they were banning women on their periods from swimming in the pool. So I tweeted, this is back when Twitter was a thing, pre-Elon. And I said this is not good enough. And then I put my phone away. And it just happened that my husband and I were growing out for dinner somewhere with no reception. And when we got home that night, my phone was blowing out. And it turns out that Milo Unipelus, and you don't know who that is, Milo Unipelus, he's like a super yeah, right wing influencer, horrible misogynist had retweeted me to his followers to say, get this woman. And the best response I saw was, listen bitch, ain't nobody want to swim in your bloody snatch water. Your feelings are irrelevant. That's just nasty. Now I didn't find a fence in that myself. My husband and I have had an ongoing joke for years that when I start my heavy metal band, we're going to call it bloody snatch water. It's going to be awesome. But the point is that other women, other girls, other people with periods saw that. They saw me get attacked and it makes them, it, it can silence people, right? So there's all these things going on that are very unsupportive to people who menstruate. On a professional level, about five years ago, I worked with a team and we, we reviewed literally all of the qualitative research that was out there on experiences of menstruation in high income countries. So what that means is we looked at every study, we ended up with over 100 studies at Mount criteria that looked at through interviews, focus group discussions, narratives by participants. What were their experiences of menstruation? What were the antecedents? What drove those experiences? And how did that impact their lives negatively? And so thousands of people's stories. And we submitted it to a high impact journal that had already published the low and middle income version of this study. And it got desks rejected. For those of you who aren't academics, normally, if you, or not normally, when you submit to a journal, it will go to an editor who will decide whether it should go for peer review. And in my experience, normally it will go for peer review, which means at least two other academics will then review it and decide whether you need to make changes. So it got desks rejected by a male whose reason for rejection was that we prioritized research on conditions that contribute to a substantial proportion of the global burden of disease. Now, half of the world does will or has menstruated. And we know that over 80% of people who have periods have cramping and over 50% of people have things like lower back pain, acne, headaches, mood swings. Some people have diarrhea and constipation and ovulation pain. So that is a significant burden of disease. This was five years ago. I don't think he would get away with that now. Like I think we've moved forward very quickly. But it was just a lesson to me in that these things, even people who I would think would be normally well-meaning, really weren't clicking to the fact that it was such an issue for people. And if you really want to get into like the economics of it, this burden of disease, the cramping, the mood swings and nausea is leading to an impact on the economy and people going to work or not. So I didn't end up fighting that because at the same time I found out that they weren't going to, we'd done the study pro bono. And I found out that they weren't going to waive the fee for us. And it was going to cost us almost $10,000 Australian dollars to publish there. So we didn't fight it. We went to a lower impact journal and published it. And it's been used all around the world, not just cited in journals, but used in policy spaces and things as well to demonstrate what menstrual experiences really look like. So I would like to think that a lot of the men that I've spoken about in these unsupportive scenarios were just ignorant and not necessarily willfully ignorant. I started out as a wash engineer. And traditionally, wash engineers were men. And it wasn't until the early 2000s that women wash engineers started going into the field and talking to people in communities about toilets and clicking, well, how did women manage their periods? So that was really something that that is how menstrual hygiene kind of came to be a thing because the women engineers started saying, well, this is being an issue for me. And so this was about 2010 that this became more mainstream or at least talked about in wash circles. And then the sexual and reproductive health people started saying, well, actually, it's not just about having a pad or having somewhere to wash or dry or dispose of it. It's also about access to health care. We had more of the social sciences coming in and saying, we've got to think about the atmosphere. And in 2021, some of my colleagues published a definition of menstrual health moving forward. And it was, so these are the things that we need to be able to have good menstrual health. You need to have something to bleed on or in. So products and also some way to wash, dry or dispose of them. You need to have access to health care so that you can get help with disorders or pain. You need to have education and not just for people who have periods, but the wider environment that people need to know, not just the reproductive function of periods, but also what are the experiences like? What's it like for people to manage this for 40 odd years of their lives? People need to have a stigma-free environment, so they need to be able to go about and not be worried that leaking through your pants is going to be the worst thing that's ever happened to your entire life. And you're going to be ridiculed for it. And they need to be able to participate in all activities that they want to, but not necessarily activities that they don't want to. So I'm a millennial. I remember the tampon ads of, you can wear white and ride a horse and everything will be great. And a part of that was like second-wave feminism of saying, "We're not going to let them in, keep us down, we can do everything." But there's much more of a recognition now that people don't necessarily want to do everything, I don't know, on their periods. They might want some downtime. They might want to break from cooking. And so just, sorry, I lost my train of thought there. So yes, and we shouldn't shame people for that. So I have heard in my research, you know, men and women telling people who've got periods, pain or whatever, saying, "I don't want to do that because," XYZ, saying, "You need to just suck it up because women can do everything, like, don't let the women side down." Where are we at in Perth? So all over Australia, period products are now provided in schools, free of charge, in high schools, sorry, free of charge. Yep, maybe not everywhere, but in WA, yes. So in WA state schools, we provide free menstrual products and also in WA tapes. That's what we've got in terms of the state government. Other places, it's all up to individual organizations and things, but the problem that I see sometimes is that it's very well-meaning, but these products are being put in the women's toilets, in the female toilets, not necessarily in the accessible toilets. So, and this is an argument I'm having with the Guild at UWA at the moment that we need to make sure that they are available in accessible toilets for people who physically need to or just want to use those toilets and non-binary and trans people who menstruate as well. So if we're going to provide products, we need to make sure that they are available to everyone when they're needed. We've done pretty well now, I think, at least for people who identify as girls or in schools at getting products. And that's part of this big media push that girls aren't going to school because they don't have pads. But the latest research, like big epidemiological studies, not my area, that I have read them, show that one of the main reasons much more so than products is that girls aren't going because of their symptoms, because they're not able to manage their pain and that kind of thing. So we need to think about things beyond products. We also see here in Perth, as I said, we've still got the bullying, we've got the shame, we have limited education for a lot of people. It's still, I'm still hearing stories of boys being taken separated from the girls and school, which is fine if you want to teach them separately, but then the boys go off and play football or whatever, right? So there's not that understanding there. We've got people who miss out on activities. We've got people who do activities, as I said, because they feel like they have to. And we've got people of all ages from adolescence up to people who are in the perimenopause, who are worried and stressed all months long that they will get their period and they will not have a product that they will not have a toilet. We call this in incontinence and incontinence work and even in menstrual health, the toilet leash. So people who plan their whole lives around whether they'll have access to a toilet. So I suitably depressed everybody. Yeah? I am so excited at how many men are in the room. Thank you. This is definitely the highest male to female ratio I have seen at a menstrual health event. So thank you. Alright, so I have some examples of men and boys and people who don't have periods being supportive, but I would love to hear from you. Is anyone got a good example? So I've just told you all the negative things. Anyone got some examples you've seen of people with periods being supported? You've got one up there. Can I go? My husband, my husband, Buying tampons saw me at the supermarket, not cringing. Nice. I have a seven-year-old boy who has been learning about periods for as early as he possibly could. And now when I have my period, he runs and tells dad, we need to go, we need to look after him, which is really good. They're on cooking duties and ice cream duties, which is for most importance. Yay! Thank you. I'd love to hear if any men also want to share what they do for their partners or children. I don't want a woman's plane over a man who's about to share the great things that he does through anyone else. Yep, and that's one of the back. Love your work, Danny. I do talks in schools about menstrual health and education and there was a boy who came recently just from the community who was 10, only boy in the whole auditorium and I said, oh, what's your name and what are you doing here? And he said, well, I'm learning puberty at school and I wanted to come along so that I had something good to share so that I could tell my class. And I just think it's really good to know that those things happen and that they're normal. I also had a son of the other day with a dad who talked about how he washes his daughter's period pants and that was just totally normal. Awesome. Thank you. That'd be scared. This is more of a suggestion to everyone in the room, particularly men. If you're going to a festival or on a night out, put one in your back, put one in your bum bag or whatever it is you're carrying things in because they're all really crappy places to not have something to bleed on or in. Is there one up the back? Two up the back, awesome. I saw something fabulous not in Purse, sadly, but in Scotland, they have menstrual products available in all of the toilets for free, all the time, not just at schools and I was really impressed with that. Yes, they have actually got passed an active parliament to provide them free in public spaces. I'm the pride officer. Danny knows this. The guild has only recently started peer care, but the pride department has been providing free peer care products for the last six years now. And one of the duties of the pride officers to make sure that the peer care products are stopped. I unfortunately do not have a lot of experience buying peer care products. So one of the best memories that I will take from my 10-year-old pride officer is me just calling my events manager, calling her in the middle of the aisle at Woolies. I mean, like, hey, what do you want me to get? And I just show her what I'm getting. And she's like, no, you're making a shit choice. And so what she does is she gets our social media manager and our secretary, all of whom are women, amazing women, on a conference call. And we just spend 10 minutes having a little discussion about how and what we are going to buy in the middle of the Woolies out. And that is probably one of the best memories I'll take from this year. That's awesome. Thank you, Arriman. Just a question for the women in the room. Do you buy your products like you buy your wine? Like, does it look pretty? Right? The you tampons and things that are all colorful, definitely a draw card for me. Yeah, see? No one wants to admit it, but you're real thinking it. All right. Any other positives? Okay. I'm going to share one. That means a lot to me. So my grandfather passed away a couple of years ago. But in about 2014, I was wearing this bracelet at Christmas breakfast. And it's an advocacy bracelet worn by people in the menstrual health space. So it's kind of to show each beat as a day. The red is menstruation days, leading days, and then the other days. And my granddad asked what it was. And I told him. And he was like, oh, this is not table conversation. He used to talk about coupons, though. He didn't care about that. And I was like, this is great. I'm going to shock you about this, which it's harder to shock people now 10 years ago. It was like, yes, I'm going to make you really uncomfortable. But the really awesome thing is that in the years that followed my granddad started going on at everybody about the fact that there were women in Australia still who didn't have access to menstrual products. And that it was not good enough. And in 2020, he had his walking stick. And he let me film him for Twitter, again, RIP, going, it's time for action. Everybody needs menstrual products now. And that I thought was just like the epitome of a man being really supportive. What else am I saying? I have last week I was in South Africa. I work a lot in informal settlement. So with people who have are often living in poverty and also have very little, don't have very good sanitation and things. And I was hearing lots of really depressing stories. But then I heard a couple of women talk to me about partners buying pads, tampons or normally pads and bringing pain relief. And also somebody's little brother. So she was 26 and her 13-year-old brother would come and ask her what she needed. I think she probably has undiagnosed endometriosis. So she said she was on the floor for three days a month. And when I was leaving Cape Town, the Uber driver who picked me up, he really wanted me to sit in the front seat. And I'm like, okay, I'm really tired from the week. And I don't know if it's offending people to say he was a boomer, right? So he's a bit older than me. And he started asking what I've been doing. And I was like, you know, normally I would engage, but I was kind of tired. And eventually I said, yeah, I'm working on menstrual health. And he's like, it's so important. I've got four daughters and five granddaughters. And we always have these period drives. I hear them on the radio and companies call in to donate money for products. And they go into the schools like, that's so awesome. And that was just a really unexpected discussion with a guy who really got it. So what are we doing now? As I alluded to, I have run and I did mention you Sam up the back. I said you come in later. So Sam and Danny and Lavanya and I ran a community conversation a few weeks ago with dads of teenage daughters. And this is because we see that dads are a group of people who don't have periods but have vested interest in supporting their daughters. So we saw a lot of practical support. So dads who were by pads or heat packs or make sure there was always panic all in the house or always chocolate. There's a lot of talk about chocolate. And it did, you could tell that that practical support would translate into some emotional support, right? Because the daughters knew that their dads cared about them. But the dads still really wanted to understand more, to understand more about periods and experiences and how they can help their daughters navigate particularly like the stigma and bullying side of things. So that's the work that we are trying to do now that we're trying to build on. There are great people doing work around menstruation and menopause in workplaces as well. And I would really love to hear from you, anything any examples you have of organizations that you think have been doing well or ways things that you think we should do to change this stigma. How do we get more people who don't have periods involved in the conversation and being more supportive? I just want to say thank you so much and it's wonderful talk and congratulations on all your fantastic outcomes. I'm 66 years old and I feel really embarrassed that I don't so little about this. And I was so keen to come to this talk specifically just to show some support. Thank you. I just think that the big danger for me at the moment in the world is the rise towards fascism and what's going on in America at the moment indicates that you know things could go backwards if we're not careful. And I just want to say to everybody you know this is the sort of thing we're fighting for here when people talk about emigration and all those stupid things. This is what the prices, you know, the pro, the immense progress. I mean you said what 10 years ago is incredible isn't it? And good for you for doing all that. Thanks. No, they're not that. Thanks very much for the talk. I've got two points. Well one is a point to answer your question and the second one is a question. So I'll work for a global engineering consultancy and we have partnered up with taboo period to get period products in our business. So that's across Australia and New Zealand. So that's really positive. Second question that I have for you is I've got a friend of a friend. She is more on the holistic side, more on the natural side. When she gets her period she doesn't really use tampons because she finds it that it's quite bleached that there's a lot of chemicals. And then I've noticed that other friend as well she's starting to become like her. What are, what is your advice to that? So I don't know if you're in the last session which was about microplastics. So there probably are microplastics in a lot if not all menstrual products. I'm not a real doctor. I'm a PhD doctor. And thank you. But the clinical doctors that I have spoken to they've all said look the difference between organic and non-organic. We can't see anything at the moment that makes a big difference. So take that as you will. I can't say for certain but that's the best medical advice at the moment. Oh sorry and they're actually people who are clinical doctors who specialize in menstruation. Cut the points. You raise 50% of the population and study sorry it's the 100% of the population. So yeah he didn't get it. It's finding though the conversation that you just heard like I'm single father at two boys there's menstrual products in the bathroom. The boys mention why are they still there? Because you're girlfriends. So they stay there. But it was interesting just having a conversational colleague. I had no idea what we do at work to find out that we actually do support properly. So I think that's part of the conversation. We have a lot of women's programs for employees but we don't have men attend those to actually spread the message. So we're not getting the proper diversity in those sessions. And this is not to say that there aren't men's issues that men's health issues that women should learn about too. That's just not my area. But I personally would really like to hear more about them as well. I just had a question because this is something that I was talking about recently with someone. Is there any knowledge or do you know anything about how like what's the best way that you can support people who suffer this body dysphoria as a result of menstruation? Yeah so I can't give you advice myself but it is definitely an area where there is a lot more research being done. So when we first started doing that big study I was talking about in 2019 there was literally one qualitative paper about people who were trans or non-binary who menstruated. There's now been a lot more. So there is not much more stuff out there and I'm kind of trying to learn more about it but not put my foot in it. Like I don't want to, I think there are people who are really much better suited and better equipped to work on that area and I'm kind of trying to be supportive rather than impose my own views there. Hi Danny you know I love your work so Danny and I worked together. Thank you very much that was absolutely amazing and you know I absolutely support your work and I'm marking within years work as well. So I think from the around the room you know men are clearly on board with us and I kind of want to speak on their behalf. It's not that they don't support us and our endeavors but how can they be more involved. I think you know they're here, they hear us, they feel us but the sort of helpless sentiment really resonates. So what can they do as allies to be able to really affect change? One of my big things that I was going to finish on tonight was saying like that hopefully tonight prompted you to have a conversation either because you were coming along tonight or after we finished tonight you just get that going and for men to ask the questions and not in a are you being irrational because you're on your period way but actually more like what do you need what's your experience like my husband is married to me and has three older sisters and probably for the first like eight years we were together I would tell him stuff and he'd be like whoa I had no idea about that so that just being open and he's willing to learn and ask questions is important in terms of like dads we have we started talking to dads we knew that was going to be really hard sell but what we also want to do which are probably a bit easier is to talk to adolescent girls and ask them what do they want and the idea of this project like over the next few years will be to get an understanding of what dads think they need what support girls think that they want and then actually doing some co-design and development of some sort of output which is not defined by me but is defined by them you know do they want a change in school curriculum is it about they're being dads nights at all state schools I know there's some wonderful private schools that have sessions with dads already around Perth do they want a website you know all these things so but I think we need to hear more from from the girls and I think we also yeah just need to hear more from women as well about what they want through this kind of research just to say like if you're a guy and you're wondering what you can do like just being curious and this idea that it's not just about the period women people with periods are cyclical every week is different you know we have this changing hormonal profile that's 28 days versus one day ask us what it's like not just when we're being pre-minister and we're annoyed that we can't find the keys or when we've got our period but you know being curious about what someone's body is like that isn't yours and I think a lot of men maybe aren't comfortable being curious because they're worried about getting it wrong because the narrative for so long has been so negative so it's scary to say tell me about your period because you know you worried about saying the wrong thing but if you come from a you know a kind place and you're genuinely interested human bodies are fascinating it's like how wild to have a body that does all of these things and to be able to talk about it and use that as part of your life so just ask questions. Thank you thank you also your talk has been so accessible like I just love how you presented it and it's it's amazing I really I personally really appreciate that and I love the work that you've done with with schools and policy and guiding those sorts of things I was just wondering whether or not you'd had any involvement with industry and particularly like mining industry for example and even just around having facilities available to female employees in the industry or or you know menstruating employees in the industry particularly like in an underground mining environment yeah whether or not you you could have some scope to influence that at all or yep cool so two things first of all last year we held a community conversation and there are some reports here if anyone wants to take one where we actually interviewed people who were going through parimenopause or who were benopausal in non-office work environments to understand what the barriers were for them in terms of their well-being how they were treated that kind of thing um the and like there's all sorts of things that came out around the stigma and trying to manage in different types of environments your symptoms and things as well as the social side um with that we worked with menopause friendly Australia and they have um they work with companies to become menopause friendly accredited and they are about to launch menstruation friendly training so that's not my research area specifically but I do I do know them um and I would recommend having a look at their website getting your company um to have them along they can do like short talks and then you can decide whether you want to um go through the accreditation process do you work for menopause friendly Australia yeah yeah yeah oh we've got one of them oh sorry yeah yeah well um I did kind of want to build a little bit on that just to like provide context because I did kind of want to ask a question as well as that um I think maybe the reason we as like guys we also don't want to be curious is because I think we're afraid that we will get in trouble for like sexual harassment or something like that because I know that like it doesn't always work like that but you know like we're very confused in these things and I think that a lot of us don't want to you know we don't know what to do in the situation do I act or do I not act so I think it's sort of the fight or flight response but uh based on that I actually did want to ask a question which is kind of a little bit related to that is that um I do youth leading I have seven boys and three girls but I have my boss never like told me what would happen if one of my girls you know had her period and like being you know working with children that's a very difficult thing for a guy to actually do so would do you have any like advice of like how I can tackle this like are there any things that you know you think um I should bypass or like you know just be prepared like how can I support um my girls when um they're in that situation yeah yeah so great question I had a cadet leader he was male when I was in high school who said well we're going camping for the weekend you're in the five squares of toilet paper you'll be fine to everybody and I was like but first of all women white when we we and also periods and he was like uh don't be irrational um so I think not being like that is a good start having um having some products like if you are doing like outdoorsy activities I'm not sure exactly what kind of things you guys do but so usually sports kind of things so making sure that they're a product available but just also if the girls are embarrassed and they like need to leave quickly or they're like I need to go to the bathroom like just just let them go or don't ask questions yeah that would be my my biggest one particularly for young girls I just I had two questions where do you think um in terms of oh sorry love your work in terms of getting uh products in schools and places like that I guess post school and living as a woman in the cost over a lifetime yeah where do you think the future is in terms of like rebates through Medicare or um as well the conversation on getting sick leave and menstrual leave as a menstruating woman yeah um free products on Medicare I think we're very long way off um a few councils around WA will um give you a rebate for reusable menstrual products so if you go and buy some period undies or a cup or a disc you can send your receipt in you can get up to $50 back so for a menstrual cup that that will set you up if it works for you um in terms of the leave there's a lot of discussions going on around on around in this space um you might have heard there's people talking about menstrual leave and then there's people talking about reproductive leave and the reproductive leave is something that would apply to everybody and I think part of that and that would be for like IVF but also things like the sector means and part of that has been trying to make sure that you can get men on board as well um the the biggest concern that I think people have from a uh uh practical but from a support perspective is that most people don't want to jump sorry most people who have painful periods or various symptoms don't want to jump straight to having time off they want to have an accommodating workplace although they won't be able to work at home and then if they really need it they want to take time off so I think there's a lot of debate there around well if organizations did better we wouldn't necessarily need that time off but we are also seeing well and we're also seeing an organizations who have already got that period leave so on top of sick leave and in some other countries that it is very rarely being taken up so there's been an argument against it because it's like oh this is just more for like small businesses to have to pay out more sick leave and things um but it is generally generally being used just by a few people who need it and not necessarily every month so I think we definitely need to keep having that conversation and figure out how we can support the menstrual leave side of things but also support systemic change so that it's not necessarily the only option. Am I? Sorry I hope what I say makes sense because my brain's just going all over the place at the moment but I'm really loving your discussion and everything that you've watched the space and I think I speak on behalf of everyone that you know we have all learned something yeah um I'm really curious around the conversations that you are having with men of teenagers um I am very grateful that I have an excellent partner who is very proactive in learning how to support our daughter however I am curious around whether or not there has been a trend of young women getting their periods earlier um because what initially came up was is that conversation too soon and being an advocate of preventative being in prevention spaces rather than intervention we can always be having conversations the earlier the better so I'm just curious around if that's happening with parents around younger women so that 8 to 9 to 10 sort of mark and how we can normalise those conversations in advocating for they need that education sooner and that we need to understand how to support sooner okay. Great um so just on a personal note I have a four-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl and my four-year-old already has a book on where babies come from that he loves and it's got different people and some of the people that clowns so he's really excited that when his pubic hair comes in it might be rainbow and I and to me I'm just like let's just tell him about everything now my aunt has to read it to him and it's like well and people like rub up against each other in the penis inches of a vagina or my aunt's like oh if I can do this I can do anything but like he just thinks it's completely normal um so I think maybe talking about other things that you can do as a as a partner as a dad is just like yeah just normalise it um girls getting periods earlier like that is a thing that we're seeing we don't know exactly why um if you were here in the last talk um Michaela was saying that they think that might have something to do with plastics things in the environment probably a heap of different things but um yeah I don't really understand what the pushback is about anyone knowing about puberty earlier so yeah yeah schools okay she says that there are things to be a pushback in schools thank you look thanks for everything tonight it's been fantastic I wasn't the previous talk just talking about you know moving forward away from traditional products you know things like menstrual cups um what percentage are you finding of people now that are moving towards those type of products from more conventional products I suppose well I don't know the actual numbers but I know it has obviously got one a lot more does anyone know do you think that there's a barrier because I know from talking to other people it is a challenge because in commercial facilities there is an individual sort of basins in every cubicle do you think it's time that we looked at maybe changing some of those dimensions when we're doing our design work because we're not promoting an environment where you can easily use those alternative products yeah you know I mean so you know menstrual cups going to last for years um you know there are a lot of people that really like those type of products I think it's fantastic you know less less you know uh chemical based products going into your body but maybe on a design point of view we need to really be looking at how we improve facilities you know like in a disabled bathroom it's not a problem but in most cubicles if you've got a menstrual cup and you need to empty it clean it that's really challenging yeah no I 100% I think that we should be moving to more gender neutral more accessible toilets before I was at UWA I was I am a Perth girl originally but I've lived a few places around the world and I was in the UK at University of Leeds and in their guild and a lot of other buildings it was gender neutral fully contained cubicles where you could manage everything um and yeah just as a as a person who gets a period that was very comforting and useful for me Lucy has something to say about dads yeah just um the pushback around talking about periods early I think what often happens in school is they talk about periods once in year five then they do it again in year seven but immediately after periods they then they do sex ed so a lot of people get really worried about talking about periods because then they think that I'm going to have to now talk to sex and I don't want to do that so that's kind of the thing that people really need to get more comfortable with is just telling kids the facts and being in service to them having information yeah okay thanks um and yes we we have found that like colleagues I know who have worked in Uganda for example where they weren't wanted to trial um kind of the best practice now with any trials around menstrual health and hygiene is give people a choice of all the products and they can choose what they want to use but the the ethics and the Ugandan level said you cannot give them menstrual cups as an option because they might use them to masturbate with we're like what this is your big concern um so yes that that link between periods and sex can make people uncomfortable but yes obviously in the vast majority of our lives it's not linked to sex time for one more question no no oh we got one more over here have we yeah let's go on um just on that as well around normalising the conversation I think it's around equipping people to have the conversation as well uh there still is that shame and that stigma and that to booness around it and for young people if they need to discuss something like their period they are going to file it in that sexual health sort of category and they might not feel comfortable having an discussion with their maths teacher or their English teacher around that so around having the education that they're that's accessible but also supporting educators to provide that information so that it is effectively delivered yeah and so just to say obviously it's going to add so in terms of like the curriculum um the the the health curriculum is very very broad it's literally like year five is like changes associated with puberty and that's what it says in the curriculum and then the schools decide what they want to do with that um and then each year it's something like another sentence that kind of builds on that um so yeah it's about making sure that that's well designed and then all schools are getting good education and also that trying to make sure that it's not just the one teacher but like oh they're the one that's outgoing and we're going to make them be the one that talks to the girls then they're always going to be the one that the people come to but actually making it so that the teachers who are men might also show some understanding and not be so uncomfortable about it. Thank you so I've got one last question for you. What is it that you hope this audience is going to do when they leave here tonight? Have a conversation with someone who's not in the room about periods um or post something on social media about the fact that you were here tonight so that somebody else sees at night has a conversation with somebody else. Can you all do that? Yeah. Thanks. So thank you for coming. It's very clear that you all thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Danny Barretton's talk. Please join me in congratulating her for a fantastic presentation. Thank you. Thank you for coming out on a Tuesday night. I have a two in a four-year-old. I didn't know so many people went out on a Tuesday. Just to say anyone who came in a bit late we have got all of these products that you can have a look at up the front if you want. Right. But I do have to say to you a couple of other bits of business. One, the bar's closing up here so if you do want to look at the products you might want to rush downstairs and get a drink and order some food before the kitchen closes if you are still allowed to stay out on a Tuesday night. If you're interested in the podcast recordings remember that tonight's talks are all going to be listed on the raising the bar website under podcasts and we'll send you the links. And it just remains for us to say on behalf of Danny and myself. Thank you for coming. Have a wonderful evening and we look forward to seeing you as we continue to seek knowledge at our future events. Good night.