Business Report Opinion

Period poverty on the South African frontlines

Caroline van der Merwe|Published

Around 4 million experience period poverty - an inability to access safe, hygienic menstrual products, facilities and education to manage periods with safety and dignity.

Image: Pixabay/ Grimnona

Women make up some 52% of South Africa’s labour force, according to Statista data. Our workplaces, however, aren’t equally geared to meet women’s needs. For millions of women in frontline, or deskless roles, the workplace presents challenges our male colleagues will never endure.

Take menstruation. Around 22 million South Africans menstruate every month. Around 4 million experience period poverty - an inability to access safe, hygienic menstrual products, facilities and education to manage periods with safety and dignity.

This is particularly acute for frontline workers who may work on construction sites, on farms, in factories, as cleaners, security guards or in other facilities where they cannot easily access secure bathrooms with soap and running water, if at all.

A woman who is worried her period flow is going to leak through her uniform is not fully focussing on her work. Menstrual symptoms like severe cramps, headaches, and nausea pose genuine threats to worker health. This is especially true for those working in extreme temperatures or doing physical labour.

If symptoms become overwhelming and or their supplies run out, these women stay home, missing out on income they desperately need. For low wage workers earning R6,000 to R10,000 a month, a single day’s pay makes a difference to being able to pay for food or transport or school fees.

Taking emergency leave because they don’t have tampons or pads, or because their physical symptoms incapacitate them places a strain on women’s working relationships, particularly if these are repeated absences. This impacts their performance reviews and promotional opportunities. Jem’s 2025 Deskless Worker Pulse preliminary findings indicate that men are more confident about promotion (45.4% “very possible”) than women (38.5%), with 31.5% of women believing they’re unlikely to advance (vs. 21.5% of men). While there is more to unpack here, it is telling data at first glance.

Then there’s the ongoing stigma around menstruation, which is seen as dirty or shameful. Social pressure is high for women to just manage these things quietly without making a fuss. This makes it harder for women to speak out, even to each other, to ask for help, let alone ask managers or employers for adequate facilities to manage periods in the workplace and regular breaks to manage period symptoms. This extracts a physical and emotional toll, month in and month out.

Employers can help by ensuring that they provide adequately equipped facilities that have water, soap and disposal bins, and that lock. Install dispensers for tampons and pads so that women always have access to what they need, even if their funds run out. This will reduce emergency leave requests and reduce costly workplace mistakes. Finally, ensure that all managers are trained to sensitively tackle conversations around something that is often a cultural taboo.

Denying women the basic infrastructure we need to manage a fundamental aspect of our biology implicitly devalues us as humans and erodes our confidence and dignity, daily. Employers can help their people thrive and reach their full potential by being sensitive to this and ensuring all of their people’s needs are sensitively and adequately accommodated. They will be rewarded by more productive people, lower employee turnover, and a happier workforce.

Caroline van der Merwe, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Jem. 

Caroline van der Merwe, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Jem. 

Image: Supplied.

BUSINESS REPORT