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Spanish menstrual literacy and experiences of menstruation

There is growing recognition of the important role menstrual health plays in achieving health, education, and gender equity. Yet, stigmatisation and taboo remain present and negative emotions like fear and shame dominate the narrative when speaking about periods. This paper analyses how formal and i...

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Autores principales: Sánchez López, Sara, Barrington, Dani Jennifer, Poveda Bautista, Rocio, Moll López, Santiago
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10074887/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37016318
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-023-02293-4
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author Sánchez López, Sara
Barrington, Dani Jennifer
Poveda Bautista, Rocio
Moll López, Santiago
author_facet Sánchez López, Sara
Barrington, Dani Jennifer
Poveda Bautista, Rocio
Moll López, Santiago
author_sort Sánchez López, Sara
collection PubMed
description There is growing recognition of the important role menstrual health plays in achieving health, education, and gender equity. Yet, stigmatisation and taboo remain present and negative emotions like fear and shame dominate the narrative when speaking about periods. This paper analyses how formal and informal menstrual education is received in Spain, to understand the role of menstrual health literacy in the way menstruation is experienced, and to identify what information would be useful to integrate into formal menstrual education. An online survey with more than 4000 participants (aged between 14 and 80, both people who will/do/have previously menstruate/d and those who do not menstruate) was conducted. Data was gathered using the digital platform Typeform, descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed with SPSS software and qualitative data was thematically analysed using Nvivo. Many participants declared not having received sufficient information on menstruation prior to menarche, particularly about how to physically manage it. Furthermore, negative emotions like shame, worry, and fear were recurrently reported to describe menarche; this has not changed between generations. Interestingly, we saw an increase in stress and sadness with an increase in perceived knowledge of the reproductive role of menstruation. We did observe a reduction in negative emotions when people who menstruate perceived they had sufficient information on how to manage their first bleeding. It is recommended that menstrual education beyond reproductive biology, particularly including how to physically manage periods, is integrated into school curricula. Menstrual education of everyone – including those who do not menstruate—can improve how periods are experienced in Spain. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12905-023-02293-4.
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spelling pubmed-100748872023-04-06 Spanish menstrual literacy and experiences of menstruation Sánchez López, Sara Barrington, Dani Jennifer Poveda Bautista, Rocio Moll López, Santiago BMC Womens Health Research There is growing recognition of the important role menstrual health plays in achieving health, education, and gender equity. Yet, stigmatisation and taboo remain present and negative emotions like fear and shame dominate the narrative when speaking about periods. This paper analyses how formal and informal menstrual education is received in Spain, to understand the role of menstrual health literacy in the way menstruation is experienced, and to identify what information would be useful to integrate into formal menstrual education. An online survey with more than 4000 participants (aged between 14 and 80, both people who will/do/have previously menstruate/d and those who do not menstruate) was conducted. Data was gathered using the digital platform Typeform, descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed with SPSS software and qualitative data was thematically analysed using Nvivo. Many participants declared not having received sufficient information on menstruation prior to menarche, particularly about how to physically manage it. Furthermore, negative emotions like shame, worry, and fear were recurrently reported to describe menarche; this has not changed between generations. Interestingly, we saw an increase in stress and sadness with an increase in perceived knowledge of the reproductive role of menstruation. We did observe a reduction in negative emotions when people who menstruate perceived they had sufficient information on how to manage their first bleeding. It is recommended that menstrual education beyond reproductive biology, particularly including how to physically manage periods, is integrated into school curricula. Menstrual education of everyone – including those who do not menstruate—can improve how periods are experienced in Spain. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12905-023-02293-4. BioMed Central 2023-04-04 /pmc/articles/PMC10074887/ /pubmed/37016318 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-023-02293-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Sánchez López, Sara
Barrington, Dani Jennifer
Poveda Bautista, Rocio
Moll López, Santiago
Spanish menstrual literacy and experiences of menstruation
title Spanish menstrual literacy and experiences of menstruation
title_full Spanish menstrual literacy and experiences of menstruation
title_fullStr Spanish menstrual literacy and experiences of menstruation
title_full_unstemmed Spanish menstrual literacy and experiences of menstruation
title_short Spanish menstrual literacy and experiences of menstruation
title_sort spanish menstrual literacy and experiences of menstruation
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10074887/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37016318
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-023-02293-4
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