The report of the fieldwork in Taipei, Taiwan

Reporting day: 2024/ 3/ 2/ (Year)(Month)(Day)
Reporter: Haruka Miura

This is Haruka Miura, second year of Graduate School of Osaka University, Human Sciences in International Cooperation Studies, I would like to report on fieldwork in Taipei, Taiwan, which took place from 18th to 21st February 2024.

This is a report of fieldwork in Taipei, Taiwan, conducted from 18-21 February 2024.
Four teachers and four students conducted research on menstruation policies in Taipei City, Taiwan, where even in February the daytime temperature is over 30°C, and we walked around the city in the strong sunshine.

In Taiwan, sanitary products will be installed in the toilets of the Taipei Metro (private underground) from 2022, and an initiative has been launched where anyone can take them for free without permission.
An article is available on the Taipei Metro website. The article can be viewed at the following URL.  Click here for the news article.

Many educational institutions in Taipei and elsewhere have also installed free sanitary products in school toilets.
In this field research, we investigated the use and management of the free sanitary products provided at stations and schools.

We visited two railway stations and a university, but free sanitary products had been removed from the toilets in all three places. Then, we asked the staff in the conductor's office at the station and the staff in the health centre at the university about the background and current system for no longer providing them in the toilets.

They told us that they had been discontinued to reconsider their operating methods. They said that because anyone could take them for free, people would often leave with large quantities of sanitary products at once, which meant that they could not be restocked in time and stock-outs were prolonged.

Nowadays, they can get them for free if users need sanitary products, they force to inform staff in the station and schools and writing their name, the type of sanitary product which borrow on a registration form.

On another day, we visited the Menstrual Museum (officially known as The Red House), run by the Taiwanese non-profit organisation With Red.
It is located on Yuhua Street, a 30-minute bus ride from Taipei City.
The Menstrual Museum is the only museum in the world dedicated to menstruation, where visitors can learn about how menstruation occurs and the taboos associated with menstruation. Although it is a museum, the uterus-like interior and objects in the shop are like modern art and can be enjoyed by men and women of all ages.　

In addition to running the above museum, The Red House by With Red also promotes free sanitary pads in toilets in Taiwan.
The Red House website  URL can be found here.

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