Breaking the Silence, Challenging Stigma. On the Broken Silence around Menstruation and the Complexities of Challenging Menstrual Stigma Through the Formation of Menstrual Policies.
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2024-08-27
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en
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Menstruation is no longer a topic simply to be shied away from or something to use in jokes on emotional women. Instead it is taken seriously by an increasing amount of researchers and once private menstrual issues have even entered the public political realm. which suggests that the silence around menstruation has been broken. However, although the hope is expressed by political and activist actors that menstrual taboos and stigma will simultaneously follow when menstrual issues are adopted into the political realm, questions have already come up to what extent there is actual stigma-challenging potential in the menstrual policies that we are now seeing (Olsen et al; 2022). This research has attempted to uncover conditions that are necessary to actually challenge menstrual stigma, with a focus on the framings of menstruation by political and activist actors, and news media in Scotland and The Netherlands. These conditions were determined through a mapping of the processes in which the menstrual issue of period poverty entered the Scottish and Dutch political realm and a Critical Frame Analysis of political and media discourse. A comparison between the Scottish and Dutch case suggest that especially stigma-challenging framing by political actors may be of influence in formulating menstrual policies with stigma-challenging potential, although the overall stigma-challenging potential of the political debate is seemingly limited. The findings furthermore show that timing of menstrual activism and a media mobilisation are of lesser importance. For now, time will have to tell how menstrual stigma will be broken and the extent to which menstrual policies will have aided in the process of changing the widespread belief that periods are something dirty in need of covering up.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen