After more than a year, we finally made it. The THM Senate approved our request for donors for free menstrual products. Enclosed you will find our planned locations, which we still have to coordinate with the THM. The filling of the dispensers is carried out and financed by the AStA. The project is initially limited to one year and will be evaluated thereafter.
We are currently conducting a survey on which tampon and sanitary pad brands should be in the dispensers. All THM students and employees can participate in our Moodle course.
Here you can find the donors (soon)
Casting
- Building A10 ground floor: women’s, men’s, barrier-free toilets
- Building C10 ground floor: women’s, men’s toilets, barrier-free toilet on 3rd floor
- Building C13 2nd floor: women’s, men’s toilets
Friedberg (A-Building)
- Women’s restroom A3.1.01
- Men’s room A4.0.10
- accessible toilet A1.U1.05
Why do we think these donors are important?
About one-third of the students at THM are female, plus trans and non-binary individuals who bleed for about 4-7 days and have to leave classes partly because of non-existent menstrual items because of it. Menstrual product dispensers are especially needed when menstruation starts surprisingly early or late. Often, menstruators then have to make do with toilet paper or other unsanitary alternatives, or interrupt classes to go home.
When menstrual products are recognized as part of basic hygiene needs and provided free of charge, it not only helps to de-taboo and normalize periods, but also prevents period poverty.
Each menstruating person spends an average of several hundred euros on menstrual products over the course of a three-year bachelor’s degree. Depending on the university, this is roughly equivalent to another semester’s tuition that menstruators involuntarily pay. Thus, access to free menstrual products is also a concrete measure of gender equality and a matter of equal opportunity.
That is why we demand that menstrual products, just like soap, toilet paper and disposable towels, be provided free of charge.
Free menstrual products in educational institutions represent a low-threshold and comparatively low-cost way to improve educational equity and thus, in the long run, equal opportunity. Other positive effects would also include significantly reduced worry before and during menstruation, improved mental health and well-being, and ease in performing activities of daily living.
