In the age of mass incarceration, incarceration rates among women have continued to skyrocket over recent years. In 1980, there were about 26,000 incarcerated women in the United States. That number has significantly increased by 700%, to about 222,000 incarcerated women in 2019. With the rates of incarcerated women increasing, the inadequate health care provided to this population is glaringly apparent. Women have specific health needs that must be attended to even while in correctional facilities, including access to menstrual hygiene products. However, incarcerated women are not provided with adequate access to treatment when it comes to their gender-specific health care needs.

 

Given the majority of incarcerated women are of a younger age demographic, the majority of women incarcerated are thus still menstruating. Common stressors and situations that affect most incarcerated women can have a significant impact on their menstrual bleeding. For example, factors such as poverty, exposure to trauma, addiction, and mental illness can lead to various gynecological conditions. Studies have shown that, as a result of these factors, forty percent of incarcerated women have abnormal menstrual bleeding. Despite this, women in correctional facilities do not have ready access to consistent and quality menstrual hygiene products.

 

The menstrual hygiene products that incarcerated women do have access to are of sub-par quality. The sanitary napkins that are typically provided at correctional facilities have low absorbency and do not have wings. Along with the poor quality of sanitary napkins, correctional facilities typically do not provide incarcerated women with the appropriate quantity of sanitary napkins needed for their entire menstrual cycle. Women typically need about twenty menstrual hygiene products for a single menstrual cycle, yet many correctional facilities only allot about ten menstrual hygiene products for a woman’s menstrual cycle. Most correctional facilities are also very limited on the variety of menstrual hygiene products they provide. Tampons, for instance, can be considered a scarcity in some facilities given most prisons do not even provide tampons to their inmates.

 

Furthermore, there is currently no overarching policy in place regarding the distribution of feminine hygiene products in correctional facilities, leading to inconsistency among facilities in the United States. Many correctional facilities give prison guards complete discretion and control over the distribution of feminine hygiene products to inmates. As a result, this leads to prison guards providing unequal treatment to inmates by unevenly distributing the products. This discretion gives prison guards an immense power over female inmates by withholding these products as a form of punishment, or by requiring female inmates to provide something in exchange for receiving these products. Allowing prison guards to have this discretion is a major factor as to why incarcerated women have severely inadequate access to menstrual hygiene products. These are products essential to every woman’s menstrual hygiene, and far too many correctional facilities allow guards to withhold these products as a ploy to punish and humiliate incarcerated women, and thereby deprive them of basic health care.

 

There are serious health effects at risk when women are deprived of their menstrual hygiene needs. When incarcerated women are deprived of access to menstrual hygiene products, they typically resort to homemade alternativesin order to avoid bleeding through their clothes. These alternatives can be very unhygienic and thus lead to serious infections. Some studies show that mismanagement of a woman’s menstrual cycle can even increase a woman’s risk of developing cervical cancer.

 

The gender-specific health needs of incarcerated women are severely neglected, especially regarding adequate access to menstrual hygiene products. The most promising solution to eliminating this health inequity is passing new legislation, at both the state and federal levels, that would guarantee female correctional facilities are supplied with sufficient and quality menstrual hygiene products and ensure the products are distributed to inmates in an equitable manner. Women, no matter their situation in life, deserve to receive adequate health care. With proposed solutions and legislation, it is hopeful that incarcerated women will no longer be deprived of their basic health care needs and be provided with better access to menstrual hygiene products.