“The announcement effect is over, we are waiting for concrete things”

In the laundry room of the Nanterre university residence, near Paris, a small distributor of hygienic protections is fixed to the wall. Her appearance was a relief for Anca, a 21-year-old student: “Before, many of us were in period poverty. That it was taken care of by the faculty, it felt good.“

>> 33% of female students need financial assistance to buy sanitary protection, according to Fage

Previously, the young woman spent ten euros per month on these protections, to which must be added painkillers and, from time to time, lingerie. “When you live alone, it’s a financial burden so we were all waiting for that.“

Nanterre is one of the universities that have invested in around twenty free hygienic protection devices on campus: in the library, the canteen, near the amphitheatres. However, this is not the case for all places of higher education, far from it.

According to the very recent team from the Ministry of Higher Education, at the start of the last academic year just over 500 distributors were installed on campuses in France. This new team says that the deployment is continuing but we are still well below the target of 1,500 set out by the previous minister Frédérique Vidal herself. “The announcement effect is over, and we are waiting for concrete things, says Bleuenn Laot, prevention and health officer at the Fage student union. VSIt doesn’t seem huge when you see the number of female students and the places of training that there are in France.”

“We will say that it is a start. We will have to do a lot more if we want to cover the whole territory.”

Bleuenn Laot, project manager at the Fage student union

at franceinfo

Pending state funding, several universities have funded these free distributors themselves. Their access is very unequal on the territory. Most are installed in large universities and it is much rarer to find them in delocalized sites, or in training institutes and schools isolated from campuses.