Journal
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CULTURAL STUDIES
Volume 26, Issue 6, Pages 880-896Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/13675494221133131
Keywords
Austerity culture; mainstream feminism; menstruation; news; period poverty
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This article analyzes the emergence of the discourse of period poverty in UK news media and examines the reasons and impacts behind this discourse. The study finds that the emergence of the period poverty discourse is closely related to the dismantling of the welfare state, the rise of mainstream feminism, and the support from high-profile individuals.
This article analyses the emergence of the discourse of period poverty in UK news media across a two-year period. Using thematic analysis and discourse analysis, I analyse three themes: the focus on the schoolgirl, the silencing of the austerity context and the preoccupation with products and public figures to solve the structural issue of period poverty. In doing so, I argue that period poverty has emerged in the cultural sphere due to three key, and intertwined, forces: the continued dismantling of the welfare state and individualising of poverty, an escalation of mainstream feminism and feminist activism around menstruation, as well as high-profile individuals (celebrities, MPs, royals etc) supporting period poverty as philanthropy. This article brings together literature on austerity media culture and mediations of mainstream feminism/s. It expands scholarship on austerity media culture by analysing how the novel discourse of period poverty continues to individualise poverty and justify the ongoing dismantling of the welfare state, and it furthers scholarship on mainstream feminism/s by examining how the discourse of period poverty connects mainstream feminism/s with austerity and class.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available