Countdown supermarkets are ditching terms like “feminine hygiene” and “personal care” products in favour of calling tampons, pads and mens...
Countdown supermarkets are ditching terms like “feminine hygiene” and “personal care” products in favour of calling tampons, pads and menstrual cups what they are: period products.
Spokeswoman Kiri Hannifin said the move was meant to help remove the stigma many girls and women experienced about periods and their bodies.
She hoped the change would help to normalise the language used for periods and associated products.
“Words like ‘personal hygiene’ and ‘sanitary products’ give the impression that periods – which are an entirely natural part of life – are somehow something to hide to yourself, or that they’re unhygienic. They absolutely aren’t, and we can play an important role in helping change that.
“Young women, in particular, are passionate about reclaiming the language and calling periods exactly what they are. We want to support that by reflecting this in our shopping environments,” Hannifin said.
Changes would also be made to what have previously been called incontinence products, now called continence care. Intimate hygiene products would now just be called genital washes and wipes.
The impetus came from both feedback from customers and staff members voicing their concerns over the existing terminology, Hannifin said.
Two years ago they began to hear from young women who were asking about why the supermarket didn't just call the products what they were.
Feedback from mainly men around the shame and stigma associated with incontinence led to the change in terminology for those products, she said.
“There is a whole piece of work going on in this category to make continence products easier to find in our stores. We want to really understand how we can help de-stigmatise what is again a natural part of life," she said.
Brittany Cosgrove, co-founder of Nope Sisters, which donates part of its profits to causes such as period poverty, said the move was “really amazing".
“It's about time this has happened really. Hopefully once one supermarket chain does it other chains will follow,” she said.
The term “sanitary product” implied that periods were dirty, she said.
Some of the Nope Sisters range features the word "period".
“The main reason for them is to de-stigmatise periods and menstruation. That's why it clearly says period across the front,” she said.
Not all women wanted to wear the sweatshirts but most still got behind the message, she said.
“I remember growing up as a teenage girl being so embarrassed to even say the word period,” Cosgrove said.
Hannifin said Countdown was the first supermarket globally to change period product terminology.
The change would initially be seen online, from June 26, but it would take longer to roll out in stores because there were a lot of products that needed to be identified and changed.The changes had been planned for a couple of months and weren't related to a wider raft of changes in recent days and weeks towards more politically correct language in branding.
“For us it's an acknowledgement that words matter, words are powerful and do change social norms,” she said.
In 2018 Countdown lowered the price of its own brand period products to help address period poverty in New Zealand and had worked with charities to help provide them to women and girls who struggled to access them, she said.
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