Free period products in schools help girls and young women, but only when they’re available

Ontario students went back to school this month for the final year of a three-year provincial supply of free menstrual products. The products are made available through Ontario’s Menstrual Equity Initiative, which the province renewed in 2024 with a donation of 23 million products and 1,380 new dispensers for school washrooms.

The initiative responds to “period poverty,” the difficulty in affording or accessing menstrual products. In a 2023 national survey, one in four Canadian women said they had chosen between buying menstrual products and paying for essentials such as food or rent in the past year. Among adolescents in Nova Scotia, two-thirds reported difficulty affording products, and about 40 per cent had missed school, sports or social activities as a result.

Free products in schools reach students only when someone keeps the dispensers filled. We set out to measure how often girls reported reliable access to period products at school.

Empty dispensers

In 2025, we surveyed 863 girls in Grades 5 to 12 who had already had their first period. The survey was administered in a mid-sized, mostly rural school board in eastern Ontario. The board partnered with us to evaluate its own implementation of the initiative.

Only one-third of girls that we surveyed (33 per cent) said the dispensers at their school were reliably stocked (often or always). Another 22 per cent said sometimes, and 45 per cent said menstrual products were rarely or never available at their school.

Students in elementary school reported empty dispensers more often than secondary school students; students in Grades 5 to 8 were almost three times as likely as secondary students to say the dispensers were never stocked (29.7 per cent compared with 10.5 per cent). The average age at which girls get their first period has been declining and is now around 12 years, so many girls in these grades are managing their periods at school for the first time and may therefore be the ones that need most support.

However, the way the province has distributed dispensers may impact access for younger students. The original product allocation was calculated from the number of secondary schools in each board, and boards decided whether elementary and middle schools received any.

What students told us

More than half of the students (57 per cent) said they had arrived late, left early, missed a class or stayed home because of their period. Of those students, about one-third (32 per cent) said they had been without pads or tampons when they needed them, and half had leaked or bled through their clothes. One in nine students in the sample had experienced all four kinds of disruption.

We then compared girls who said their school’s dispensers were reliably stocked with girls who said they were not. Girls who reported reliably stocked dispensers had about three times higher odds of reporting better attendance, more participation in clubs and sports and better overall well-being.

This suggests the products were most useful to students who could easily access them. Because we surveyed students at one point in time, we cannot say the dispensers caused these differences, but reliably stocked dispensers were associated with more positive outcomes across all surveyed questions.

The association between access to menstrual products and better attendance has implications for long-term outcomes. A separate Canadian study that followed students from elementary to secondary school found that even a small increase in absences around the move to secondary school were linked to worse grades. If products can help improve attendance, this might protect against concerns about how well students do in school.

As expected, reports of stocking were similar across racial and ethnic groups. However, racialized students were more likely than white students to say the free products eased a financial burden (31 per cent compared with 20 per cent) and helped them join extracurricular activities (29 per cent compared with 19 per cent).

Racialized Canadians are more likely to experience poverty, and rural and remote communities — including many Indigenous communities — face higher prices and fewer places to buy menstrual products. In a rural board, the school dispenser may be the closest supply a student has.

Who keeps the dispensers full?

An evaluation of a similar policy in Chicago Public Schools found inconsistent stocking and limited staff awareness of the program, with individual staff members filling the gaps on their own.

School boards need a plan that names who restocks the dispensers, tracks how often they run empty and includes elementary schools. Research on campus programs also recommends placing dispensers inside school washrooms so students can get a product without asking an adult and involving students in checking supply.

The donation that currently supplies Ontario schools covers the 2024–25 to 2026–27 school years. We encourage the province’s next agreement to include funding for restocking and regular checks that dispensers are filled in schools.

This article was co-authored by Jessica Poff, PhD. She is a senior administrator at a school board in Ontario.