66% of South Australians who menstruate can't afford period products

What just happened

ABC News reported this week what a lot of frontline social workers and teachers in South Australia have been observing for years: 66% of South Australians who menstruate struggled to afford sanitary products in 2024. The state ranks third nationally for period poverty, behind Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

The specifics are difficult to read. Women and girls are entering supermarkets and taking products. Homeless women are using socks. Students are managing their periods with improvised materials and teachers are buying products from personal funds to fill the gap. Adelaide social worker Cate Sherlock described the theft as “a recurring thing I hear about.”

South Australia committed $564,000 to address period poverty in 2023. Victoria, for comparison, has invested $23 million.

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The both-and

This is a health problem, not only a fairness problem

Period poverty tends to be framed as a social equity issue — and it is. But it also has direct clinical consequences worth naming.

Improvised alternatives to commercial period products — cloth, socks, folded paper — increase the risk of vaginal and perineal skin irritation and infection. Using tampons beyond the recommended four to eight hours creates conditions for bacterial proliferation associated with toxic shock syndrome (TSS). TSS is rare, but historically more common in settings with poor product access, and the risk is not hypothetical.

People managing heavy menstrual bleeding with inadequate products are also managing extended skin and mucosal exposure to blood. This matters more in the context of iron deficiency, which is already underrecognised and undertreated in Australian women of reproductive age. Heavy menstrual loss is one of the leading causes of iron deficiency in women — managing it with inadequate products does not make that situation better.

Framing period poverty purely as a dignity concern, rather than a clinical one, has allowed it to be treated as discretionary spending in policy contexts where the health consequences are not discretionary.

The national poverty context makes it harder to ignore

In 2022, 3.3 million Australians were living below the poverty line. That number has now risen to 5.5 million, according to Share the Dignity CEO Rochelle Courtenay. Period poverty does not exist in isolation from housing insecurity, food insecurity, and energy poverty — they move together, and when the poverty count rises, so does the proportion of people managing periods without adequate resources.

Share the Dignity has distributed 6.2 million packets of products since 2015. That is a genuine and significant contribution from a not-for-profit organisation. It is also evidence that the supply gap is large enough to require ongoing charitable intervention at scale — which is, in any honest accounting, not a sustainable policy position.

South Australia’s $564,000 commitment reaches approximately 50,000 students annually. Against a 66% prevalence figure, that reach is far short of the need.

What better policy looks like in practice

Victoria’s $23 million investment funds free product availability in schools, community spaces, and health services. The outcome gap between states with substantive investment and those without is not a mystery — products in accessible locations are used rather than improvised around, and health risks fall as a consequence.

Other jurisdictions — Scotland, New Zealand, several UK local authorities — have treated menstrual product access as a public health infrastructure question rather than a charitable discretionary one. The evidence from those contexts does not suggest this is an expensive problem to address at a population level. The gap between Victoria’s $23 million and South Australia’s $564,000 is a policy gap, not a resource constraint.

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My two cents

If you are reading this and you have been in this situation — managing a period without adequate products, making calculations about which essential to skip — that is not invisible and it is not inevitable.

If you need products now: Share the Dignity operates nationally and has distribution points in every state. Their website allows discreet requests.

If you are a GP: the 66% figure is worth holding when patients present with recurrent vaginal symptoms, unexplained iron deficiency, or perineal skin breakdown without an obvious cause. This is not a conversation that always gets initiated. It can be, and the clinical relevance is direct.

The health risks of inadequate period product access — infection, TSS risk, worsening iron deficiency — are not theoretical. They are what happens when a basic health input is treated as optional.

Verdict: yes — this is a clinical and public health problem with a known, affordable policy solution. The question is whether it gets treated as one.

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Sources cited

1. Theft of sanitary items demonstrates period poverty desperation — ABC News, 3 September 2026. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-03/period-poverty-desperation-stealing-tampons-socks-sanitary-pads/107055266
2. Share the Dignity — period poverty resources. https://www.sharethedignity.org.au
3. Jean Hailes for Women’s Health — menstrual health. https://jeanhailes.org.au/health-a-z/periods