Jennifer Horgan: Schools have second-class citizens in more ways than one

School secretaries and caretakers deserve our support but girls are also experiencing inequality in our schools, writes Jennifer Horgan

School secretaries and caretakers at a protest on Merrion Street in Dublin on Thursday morning. These people are public servants, deserving of our full support. Picture: Stephen Collins/ Collins Photos

Secretaries and caretakers are being treated like second-class citizens in our schools – that’s according to their trade union, Fórsa. It’s a citizenship that denies them access to public service pension schemes.

Are these 2,300 secretaries and 500 caretakers public servants? Speaking as someone who works in a school, I can tell you there was a secretary who made a child smile this week, helping them manage the transition to primary or secondary school. There was a secretary checking and rechecking attendance records, phoning parents, or guardians, ensuring young people were safe.

Similarly, there was a caretaker in an Irish school fixing something that would otherwise have remained unfixed, lighting a classroom, ensuring the size of a classroom matched the class. There was a caretaker keeping school boundaries secure, keeping staff rooms and classrooms stocked and maintained – allowing learning to happen.

These people are public servants, deserving of our full support. But they are not the only people being treated as second-class citizens in our schools.

School secretaries and caretakers at a protest on Merrion Street in Dublin on Thursday morning. The primary issue driving the strike is the lack of pension parity with other public service workers. Picture: Stephen Collins/ Collins Photos

Girls fall into the same category for opposite reasons. Girls are not being treated unfairly by being treated differently. They are being treated unfairly by being treated the same – as one another, and as their male peers.

There is a menstruating student in an Irish classroom today using rolled up toilet paper to manage her period because she can’t afford a sanitary pad. There is a menstruating student in an Irish classroom today who is being told she must wait until lunch to use the bathroom because they have been locked during class to curb students vaping. 

There is a menstruating student in an Irish school in severe pain from endometriosis who has no knowledge of the condition or that she has it. More research is being conducted on menstruation than ever before but schools have yet to catch up. 

In the UK, a recent University College London study highlighted that school lessons on periods are insufficient. Regardless of gender, the report makes clear that all students should learn about menstrual and gynaecological health – including period problems such as premenstrual syndrome, heavy menstrual bleeding, endometriosis, and polycystic ovary syndrome – as well as menopause. This makes sense when the WHO says early diagnosis of endometriosis, to take one example, “may slow or halt the natural progression of the disease”. 

Another England-based longitudinal study highlights the different experiences among menstruating girls. A third (36%) of 2,686 students aged 13-16 shared their experience of “heavy or prolonged bleeding”. 

Those who reported heavy or prolonged bleeding had more absences from school every year than those who didn’t. Participants who reported heavy or prolonged bleeding were associated with a lower total GCSE score, the equivalent of a one-grade reduction.

Access to sanitary products

Closer to home, a 2018 Plan International survey in Ireland found that 50% of girls aged 12-19 reported occasional experience of period poverty and 10% reported use of “less suitable sanitary products”, for reasons of cost. The ‘occasional’ instances of period poverty relate to issues of access. The same study showed that up to 61% of students had missed school due to their periods.

Schools vary hugely but you can see how access is a problem. Often students must find designated personnel like the secretary if they get their period without warning or find themselves in the 10% of students who can’t afford to buy products that cost up to €200 a year.

Even when schools have products available, they can be unfit for purpose. A panty liner is of little use to a girl with a very heavy period. Tampons are of little use to the girl who doesn’t know how to use them. 

Schools that keep sanitary products in specific locations, most often the secretary’s office, argue that if left in bathrooms they end up stuffed down the toilet, causing plumbing issues. The kneejerk response is to remove all sanitary products from sight.

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According to Fiona Parfrey of Riley, an innovative Irish period product company, sanitary products should be treated no differently to toilet paper – as a biological necessity for half of the population. Menstruating is a normal bodily function, she says.

Going with that comparison, if students stuffed toilet paper down toilets, blocking plumbing, I assume all toilet paper would not disappear from student bathrooms. Or perhaps it would. It seems like a depressing response to me – a missed learning opportunity at the very least.

Education around menstruation

Then there is the routine practice of logging student trips to the bathroom – including start and finish times. Indeed, it is even deemed reasonable in some schools for teachers to deny access to toilets during class time. The increased pressure this might put on a menstruating student is obvious. 

We have all seen the long line outside the women’s toilets. We are not anatomically identical and yet schools run as if this were the case.

To return to the point raised by the latest research in England, the paucity of education around menstruation, students in Ireland commonly receive a couple of lessons on the fact that people menstruate. 

Unlikely, however, is a conversation around how varied periods can be. I might have a light period. Another woman, one in 10, may suffer from endometriosis, a condition that takes on average nine years to diagnose here.

Rest assured I can see the eye rolls as I type – and the eye-rollers won’t all be male. Women who went through our system are often the last to look for change. Everyone should just get on with it as we do, they’ll argue.

Yes, it is true, people do get on with it. They survive a world that continues to talk a good talk about gender equality without securing equity first. They survive a world wherein there is more research on male baldness than endometriosis.

This subcategory of older women survives it, yes, as previous generations survived early deaths from what are now perfectly curable conditions.

Progress

On a positive note, change is happening, albeit slowly. Riley is supplying over 300 locations and are listed as preferred suppliers by the government. Their full range of products are organic and less likely to cause irritation – a whole other conversation. 

They are working within a new procurement framework that allows public sector bodies to easily purchase period products and no-cost vending machines for use in public offices, buildings, and facilities. One wonders how well the framework is known nationally.

It is interesting how injustices so often rub up against one another though. No doubt there is a menstruating student turning up at a secretary’s office today, in search of a sanitary pad, to find it closed because the secretary isn’t there. 

School secretaries and caretakers at a protest on Merrion Street in Dublin on Thursday morning.  Picture: Stephen Collins/ Collins Photos

There is a young girl looking for something to which she should have basic access from a woman who is out striking for equal working conditions.

Secretaries and caretakers should get what they deserve and when they do, perhaps our next conversation could be about the public service we provide in schools.

Is it simply about maintaining what came before? When it comes to equity for girls, particularly girls with heavy, painful periods, I know my answer.