in the Netherlands, at the UvA and Beyond. (Part II)
By Toyah Höher | News | March 18, 2024
Cover Illustration: A woman passes a menstrual product to another, 2020. Annika Gordon / Unsplash
News Reporter Toyah Höher covers the ongoing fight for free menstrual products at the UvA campuses, and the administration’s reluctance to cater to students’ needs.
It seems that talk of providing free period products on campus has gone on for years without clear results. But they’re finally on their way: the Centrale Studentenraad (CSR) has announced that in the upcoming months, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) will begin providing free period products on each of its campuses.
One or two dispensers will be installed on each UvA campus: at REC, there will be one outside the B0 toilets and one by the first-floor H building toilets. At the Singel library, they’ll be placed outside the gender-neutral toilets on the first floor, and at Oudemanhuispoort they’ll be found on the DT floor. The locations at Science Park are still unknown.
Yet the road to get here, which, if you ask Stefana Feciuc of the CSR, is still only “the bare minimum,” was far from easy.
The CSR has had a file open to work with the UvA on providing free period products for a long time. The previous council was able to convince the University to provide products for a reduced price (15c) in the vending machines, and pilot projects were conducted all over campus.
“There is access to products at UvA, but not very many people seem to know that,” Lauren Chatterton of HeForShexUvA tells The Amsterdammer. “Unfortunately, the Uni is not very proactive when it comes to information about it.” The vending machines themselves are sparse and not usually well-stocked.
Many student initiatives have been vocal about the demand for free menstrual products. The ASVA Student Union ran a petition demanding their provision at the University, which collected over 1,000 signatures. On Feb. 12, ASVA hosted an event to hand over the petition to Jan Lintsen of the UvA administration and eventually reach the executive board. In a Q&A, Lintsen acknowledged the importance of the issue but denied it as being a priority or as fitting within the University’s budget. An attendee of the event tells The Amsterdammer that “a lot of the very valid questions about why the University wasn’t able to provide free menstrual products, and why the studies promised by the University on the cost of providing them have never been published,” were left unanswered. Lily George, the chair of ASVA, notes the irony of the UvA claiming it would be too expensive to provide products when grassroots organizations like the Neighborhood Feminists have done so for people in need across the city. After he had already arrived late, Lily says, “I was a bit shocked that he [Lintsen] walked away fifteen minutes early after promising to answer critical questions.” An attendee notes: “No one seemed particularly surprised. This reaction really exemplified the struggle and the administrative backlash from the University to this cause.”
This year, the CSR’s file has been in the hands of Stefana and Mic Cimmino. “We’ve been trying to push for completely free menstrual products, but it hasn’t worked,” Stefana remarks. When bringing up the issue at meetings with the executive board of the University (the College van Bestuur, or CVB), they were told that the file had already been closed after the work of the previous council and would not be discussed further.
“For us, the file is not closed. It really isn’t,” Mic notes, as they are also working on related topics, like getting gender-neutral toilets and providing bins and products for non-cis people. “We’ve had some unpleasant interactions with people within the administration in that we were told, oh, you know, it’s only for half of the university. Why should we have to provide menstrual products for them? It’s not that big of an issue,” Stefana recounts. “A lot of these discussions were very invalidating.”
Efficiency and cost are the main concerns for the University. “I completely understand that,” Stefana says. “But when you start a conversation from cost and not why we have to protect certain genders and sexual minorities in general, it’s a very uphill battle.” The CSR did its own research and offered proposals that would have cost less than the UvA’s estimates. When these were rejected, Mic and Stefana asked to see the UvA’s own estimates, but these requests were also denied. “It’s really not transparent,” Mic says. “That’s why we don’t even have the specifics of the cost. We tried getting specific numbers and talking to them about it, and they just said no.”
Stefana adds: “Technically, as the CSR, we have a right to information. But this information is also very subjective. When are we going to get it, and how fast? How many details can we get?” On top of this, she says, “It’s our first year on the CSR, and we’re dealing with executives and people from the administration that have been doing this for a long time. So it’s a power imbalance. That’s why it’s also hard to bring this up.”
Regardless, “even if the university is not doing enough about it, we try to take matters into our own hands,” Mic notes. The CSR still advocates for products to be included in the University’s budget, but seeing as a central solution has been so difficult to achieve, the CSR acquired its own products it plans to distribute. “We’re trying to use all the tools that we have.”
Until now, students could find products near the bathrooms at CREA, but it has also been discussed to provide them at the student desk. Lauren remarks that having to walk up in plain sight and reveal your menstrual emergency to ask for a product isn’t exactly a shining example of a socially safe way to make menstruating students’ lives easier: “It can be even more difficult depending on what culture you’re from, whether there’s a stigma around periods. You may feel generational shame or just not comfortable talking about it. What if it’s a man behind the desk? It’s not well thought-through.”
Undeniably, the dispensers coming to bathroom areas of the main campus buildings are a step forward. But the struggles faced by the students that fought for them should not be overlooked. “We have to fight for every bit of dignity,” Lily says. “And then they [administrations] pretend like there was never a struggle.”
“Universities have a duty to take care of their students,” Lily points out. “They set an example for how the world should be and how future generations should act.” To create a more democratic and respectful University, Mic and Stefana’s message is clear: run for student council elections and vote. Student politics may not always be visible or easily accessible; Stefana admits the lines of communication between the CSR and the students are often not very efficient. “It’s a complicated world, but if there’s a party you like, just join them and see what they stand for,” Mic suggests. “If you stand for that too, see what you can do in student politics. You can make a change, you just have to actually do it.” The next student council elections will be held from the 13th to the 17th of May.
