The problems and why it is important
48% of young women are embarrassed to talk about their periods (Seibold & Fienberg, 2018). This means that almost half of young women are embarrassed of something which is as natural as breathing. This can cause women to feel anxious and prevent them from reaching their full potential (Hennegan, Shannon, Rubli, Schwab & Melendez, 2019). A sense of embarrassment and anxiety is also likely to stand in the way of women using non-traditional menstrual products, which would not only be better for them, but also be better for the environment.
Every women uses approximately 11,000 menstrual pads/tampons in their lives (Cosslett, 2020), if we multiply that by the number of females in the world, that equals a substantial amount of waste. Most pads contain polyethylene plastic, which is an environmentally harmful pollutant (Borunda, 2019). We are hurting our planet through careless use of feminine hygiene products, and we are harming our bodies as most pads/tampons use non-organic cotton, which has been saturated in pesticides and insecticides (Borunda, 2019).
What’s the alternative? Using menstrual cups.
Menstrual cups are eco-friendly. They are silicone, which is a material derived from silica that is a type of sand. This material returns back to it’s original state as it degrades. Menstrual cups also do not contain toxins which are present in tampons and pads. Overall, menstrual cups are also easy to use, give you long lasting protection and can save you a ton of money (and even more when using code Warwick20 at www.organicup.com).
Audience
We were so excited to work on this project that we wanted to target all the women of the world… But we had to be realistic. We recognised that we will likely be most successful changing the behaviour of female students at the university. Therefore, our target audience is female students at the University of Warwick.
With the aim of trying to extend this project further, we contacted charities who have the possibility to influence what menstrual products females use and contacted multiple schools hoping that we can convince teachers, or at least one teacher, to introduce menstrual cups in sex education lessons. We decided that this is important as we build behaviours and beliefs from a young age (Baron & Banaji, 2006; Glick & Hilt, 200; Loeber & Hay, 1997), and if these behaviours are never challenged, in this case often simply because women are often embarrassed to speak about their period, or anything that relates to it, then we will never be able to engage in better behaviours, such as using menstrual cups.
What we did
1) Posters
Firstly, we distributed posters throughout campus aiming to promote the use of menstrual cups. A total of 30 of these posters were hung up in different places around campus. This included bathrooms on campus and in student accommodations.
The posters read:
“Do better, use a re-usable MENSTRUAL CUP. Take 20% off now on www.oragicup.com using code Warwick20”
“Using menstrual pads or tampons is part of the problem. Do better, use a re-usable MESNTRUAL CUP. Take off 20% now on www.organicup.com using code Warwick20.”
The first poster shows an image of an animal who has been negatively impacted by human behaviour. More precisely, the animal is hurt by the amount of plastic waste in the ocean, to which menstrual pads and tampons contribute. This image would cause an emotional reaction in many viewers. According to MINDSPACE (Dolan, et al. 2012) contextual factors, as those present in these posters, heavily impact human behaviour. In these posters, we have incorporated 3 out of the total of 9 MINDSPACE cues. We have focused on salience, affect and ego.
Salience
Human behaviour is heavily influenced by the things that our attention is drawn to (Kahneman & Thaler, 2006). Therefore, salience, which is a behavioural cue, is highly likely to attract and change individuals’ behaviour. This is relevant to our posters as we have used a black background with white writing. This should stand out as it is bold. These posters should also stand out as not many posters are curated this way, making our posters novel, and therefore more salient.
Affect
Affect is the act of experiencing emotion. Emotion is a powerful force in decision making (Hans, Lerner & Keltner, 2007). In this case, emotional response is to the images presented on the posters. Animals being harmed is an image that evokes sadness in a large number of individuals, and we can use this to our advantage when advertising a product which can stop these animals from suffering.
Ego
As humans, we want to do things that make us feel good about ourselves. In this case, we would assume that upon viewing the posters some women would feel a sense of guilt, they would feel that they are responsible. If this is the case, what would make them feel good is changing their behaviour to one that would prevent harming the environment. We offer them an opportunity to make this change. We offer re-usable menstrual cups.
The main text on this poster reads “Are you ashamed?”. Use of direct speech as such grabs the viewer’s attention (Balkin, 1999). Direct speech accompanied by imagery of a uterus should grab female viewer’s attention. Giving the viewers the sense that the poster is directed at them personally should lead them to wanting to know more and to processing the information that is presented on the poster.
The poster goes on to further inform “48% of women in the UK are ashamed about their periods. #LetsTalkAboutPeriod.” The aim of this poster is to encourage women to not feel ashamed and to encourage them to talk about their periods. For this project, speaking about periods is important. Being open makes it more likely that women can find new ways to approach periods and try out new things such as a menstrual cup. Organicup often has a buy 1 get 1 free promotion because they believe that each individual can convince one more individual to use a menstrual cup, however this would not happen if women were not willing to talk about periods. Therefore, we have recognised that a big part of our project should be about making women feel comfortable about their periods.
2) The Blog and speaking to women around campus
Creating the blog and speaking to women around campus, providing them with information
regarding menstrual cups, is what really bought our project to life. Let’s start with the blog…
We created the blog with the intention to reach more people. The blog contains information regarding why you should choose to use menstrual cups and how to have a smooth transition, the dreadful impact that pads and tampons have on the environment, as well as, where to purchase and where you can apply the 20% discount code (Warwick20).
According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), changes in attitudes are likely to take time. People can often be resistant to change; however, the change is most likely to take place when it is processed via central processing meaning that people reflect and truly process the information that is presented to them. Therefore, our aim was to ensure that people who view the blog would process the information via the central pathway. We aimed to make the information relevant to the viewer (women) on a personal level, accompanied by a sense of worry, informing them that using pads and tampons has a devastating impact on our planet, which is bound to negatively impact our lives. We believed that this is a relevant persuasion technique as Petty and Cacioppo (1986) explain that an audience having enough information and motivation to process the information at hand is something that is most likely to impact behaviour change. Unfortunately fear alone is not enough to cause a behaviour change; fear is likely to cause more resistance (Janis & Terwilliger, 1962), therefore we provided an obvious solution, switch to a menstrual cup. According to the Protection Motivation Theory (Rogers, 1985), this is likely to increase the likelihood of behaviour change.
Informing women around campus and more on how we used the blog (the main part)
We approached women around campus to discuss the topic with them. With the women who were willing to talk about this, we firstly informed them that periods are something that women should feel comfortable speaking about. We followed this up by providing them with information about how pads and tampons harm the environment and how they can be bad for the body due to the cotton used being highly concentrated in pesticides and other chemicals. We went onto inform them about how they can help the environment, and their bodies, by using the menstrual cup. Here, the elaboration likelihood model applies just as explained above.
During this process, we used the foot in the door technique (Freedman & Fraser, 1966) in conjunction with the commitment and consistency technique (Cialdini, Wosinka, Barrett, et al., 1999). The foot in the door persuasion technique is used by firstly asking for a small favour before asking for a bigger favour, which makes it more likely that the individual will say yes to doing the bigger favour. The commitment and consistency technique suggest that people are prone to being consistent once they commit to something.
Foot in the door technique – following the conversation held, we asked the females who we spoke to if they could forward the link to our blog to their friends, family members or to share it on their social media accounts. This was a small request which allowed us to reach a wider audience. Following this, we said something like “do you mind doing me another favour and ordering the cup online now to contribute to creating a better world? You can use a 20% discount code”. This not only uses the foot in the door technique but also the commitment and consistency technique as saying no would mean that they are not being consistent with the views they previously expressed regarding wanting better for the environment.
We were successful, 3 people ordered the menstrual cup from www.organicup.com !!!!!!
Those who excused themselves from ordering the cup at the time were asked to sign a form stating that they would order the cup at a later point. This was done with the hopes that public commitment to switching to the menstrual cup would encourage women to actual change their behaviour.
3) E-mails to schools and charities
We contacted multiple charities to
firstly ask for menstrual cup donations so that we could distribute these to
women around campus. Secondly, we asked charities who already distribute feminine
hygiene products to include the option of menstrual cups. We received positive responses
from two charities.
We did not get a donation, however
organicup gave us a 20% discount code (Warwick20). One charity stated that they
will introduce classes to refugee women where they will speak about the benefits
of menstrual cups, however we cannot measure if this is because of our e-mail or
if this is something that was considered before.
Following this, we e-mailed a number of schools. The aim was to encourage teachers to introduce young females to the option of using menstrual cups instead of using pads or tampons. However,
this was unsuccessful as we did not receive a response.
When emailing charities, we used 2 principles of persuasion (Cialdini, 2001).
Liking - if someone likes you they are more likely to help you. Therefore, we praised the charities for the work they are already doing to establish a relationship where we are liked.
Reciprocity - humans like to benefit from situations; therefore, we like to give to those who can give to us. In some of our e-mails contacting charities, we stated that a donation made to us would help them as it would advertise the product to women at the university.
Outcomes
· 3 people ordered menstrual cups after being provided with information
· Many people forwarded the blog, so we were able to reach a wider audience
· 33 people signed to say that they would buy the menstrual cup later. Based on the idea of public commitment, we can assume that at least some people will commit to this
· We received a 20% discount code
· We believe that many people saw the posters around campus, and it is possible that they were influenced by it, however we did not have a chance to measure this
It would be great to partner with societies such as Sexpression Warwick in order to have a larger platform where we can help women overcome shame regarding period and inform them about the alternative of using menstrual cups. It would also be useful to create an interactive social media account, for example on Instagram, where we can constantly communicate with people and encourage them to switch to menstrual cups and build women’s confidence regarding periods.
References
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Baron, A. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2006). The development of implicit attitudes: Evidence of race evaluations from ages 6 and 10 and adulthood. Psychological science, 17(1), 53-58.
Borunda, A., 2019. How Tampons And Pads Became So Unsustainable. [online] NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. Available at: <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/09/how-tampons-pads-became-unsustainable-story-of-plastic/> [Accessed 19 January 2020].
Cialdini, R. (2001). 6 principles of persuasion. Arizona State University, eBrand Media Publication.
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Cosslett, R. (2020). Thinner, smoother, better: in the era of retouching, that’s what girls have to be | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/08/thinner-retouching-girls-image-manipulation-women [Accessed 3 Feb. 2020].
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Hennegan, J., Shannon, A. K., Rubli, J., Schwab, K. J., & Melendez-Torres, G. J. (2019). Women’s and girls’ experiences of menstruation in low-and middle-income countries: A systematic review and qualitative metasynthesis. PLoS medicine, 16(5).
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Seibold, H., & Fienberg, G. (2018). Free to Bleed: Virginia House Bill 83 and the Dignity of Menstruating Inmates. Rich. Pub. Int. L. Rev., 22, 69.
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