Sports Competitors: Females

(asked on 21st May 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that there is adequate support for sportswomen dealing with the effect of periods.


Answered by
Mims Davies Portrait
Mims Davies
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 23rd May 2019

Periods should never be a taboo subject. Women and girls should never feel embarrassed to speak out about their menstrual cycle and how it affects their performance.

We have a responsibility to break down barriers for women and ensure that coaches and sporting organisations are able to help female athletes reach their full potential. I welcome the work that the English Institute of Sport are doing through their SMARTHer campaign to open up conversations amongst athletes, coaches and staff in high performance sport around athletes’ menstrual cycles in order to improve support. Sport England are also supporting the new government taskforce to tackle period poverty, primarily around actions to tackle the stigma and taboos relating to women in sport (and particularly their impact on teenage participation in physical activity in schools).

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