What Comes Next? The Future Menstrual Equity Event.

As this is the first Menstrual Equality event hosted by English department students and the student association of English department, Peggy Lee, the vice president of 23rd student association of English department, has fully participated in this event. The idea to hold this event is that the female students are 70-71% in the student composition of the English department, and menstruation is deeply connected to most students’ lives. Therefore, because of this circumstance, it is necessary to hold an event that targets the topic of menstruation to gain recognition of this issue. Speaking of the expectation of the next session of the student association of the English department, “We encountered the problem while preparing for this event. The preparation team of this event have both males and females, and it was hard to have a discussion over the knowledge of menstruation and menstrual products,” said Peggy. Because of the different level of knowledge of menstruation in males and females, Peggy hoped to have the event that can engage both males and females to reinforce the public understanding of menstruation. At the end of the interview, she said, “As a woman, I would say it would be great if we can have more events for menstrual equality in the future. I want this event not only targeted to English department students but also to the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures.” 

To further discuss the expectation for the future event, there are two participants sharing their thoughts on the Menstrual Equity event. Annie Chen and Christine Tan, who are both seniors, had donated the money and menstrual products for this event. In the interview, Annie said, “I think this event is meaningful, which helps to debunk the myth of menstruation. I really hope we can have more events like this in the future.” The other interviewer Christine talked about her reflection on this event as well, “What I like the most about this event is the lecture on menstruation, and I think we can get to know the medical aspect from an Obstetrician and Gynecologist, which is the information that we may not know from daily life.” The feedback from the participants are positive, and both of them hope to have more similar events in the future. To their expectations, both of them mentioned in the interview that they want this event to expand to the whole foreign language college. 

Even though Menstrual Equity is a global challenge, the recognition of this issue in Taiwan is still low. However, there are still a lot of groups working to build the menstrual equity environment in FJCU. Not only the English department had a menstrual equity event. Student association of FJCU had held the event to diminish menstrual poverty, in which they provided free menstrual products to the female students in 2023. Another example is the department of sociology. They had a lecture with the non-profit organization WithRed that targets menstrual equity to talk about the situation of menstrual poverty and their solutions to the situation in 2023. 

To the future expectation, it may be more and more people who recognize this issue and more and more groups to work on diminishing menstrual poverty and improving the menstrual equity environment. In the future, we may have not only the students from the English department be benefited but also all students in FJCU be benefited too.