Brittiny is sharing the love for Share the Dignity

How did you arrive at Share the Dignity?

I started as an intern. I was studying journalism with a minor in public relations at Griffith University in Brisbane, and I said to the person who organised the internships that if I was ever to leave journalism and move into PR, I’d want to do it for an organisation I was passionate about. They set me up with Share the Dignity, which was very small at the time, so I was working directly with Rochelle [Courtenay], the founder, and was there for about six months. I found my way back after mass redundancies at News Corp, via another not-for-profit.

What’s your role at Share the Dignity?

I started off as a marketing communications coordinator, then became the marketing communications specialist, and now I’m the advocacy and communications specialist.

What does Share the Dignity do?

We’re working to ensure menstrual equity, which means not just providing period products, but advocating for lasting change to government (Share the Dignity helped end the “tampon tax” in 2018). We also look at providing education materials and broader health outcomes. We have two major campaigns throughout the year, starting with our Dignity Drives, where we collect period products at Woolworth supermarkets across the nation, twice a year. We also have “It’s in the bag”, where we collect bags filled with essential items to give out to women, girls and those who menstruate who are fleeing domestic violence, experiencing homelessness or extreme poverty.

How big a problem is menstrual inequity?

In 2024, we did a major piece of work, the Bloody Big Survey – we like our puns. It was a national survey that had 153,000 Australian respondents who menstruate. Results showed that the number of people who have experienced “period poverty” in Australia is quite alarming. We found 64 per cent had struggled to afford period products and the findings showed that there are certain criteria that make people a lot more likely to experience it. If you’re homeless or if you are gender diverse, you’re more likely to experience period poverty, as well as if you’re Aboriginal or a Torres Strait Islander, or if you’re fleeing domestic violence. But then we also found that a lot of low and middle-income earners were experiencing period poverty. When you look at the cost-of-living crisis and post-covid, people [in need] can even have a full-time job, but still, with everything else increasing, period products are often the first thing to come off the shopping list, to be able to put food on the table and buy other essentials.

We’re continuously working in that space, and we continue to push to create change. In the survey, we collected postcode data, so we’ve been able to go out to every council in Australia, asking them to help us ensure menstrual equity. We’ve successfully advocated for schools to provide period products in some shape or form, across almost all of Australia. Now we’re pushing for that to include primary schools, because some girls get their period as young as eight, and we are advocating for period products provided in custody settings. There’s a lot of work still to be done. We’re working to have those conversations, but I think what we’ve been able to achieve is quite special.

Education must be super important if girls can have their first period when they’re eight.

Yeah, it's a big thing. It means that you need to explain it earlier than you think, because otherwise if you get your period and you don’t know what it is, it’s quite a scary thing. We had lots of people telling us that they thought they were dying. Fifteen per cent of respondents didn’t know what a period was before they got it.

Speaking more personally, what do you get out of working in this area?

Being able to see the difference. I’ve gotten to speak to women who are fleeing domestic violence and received a bag, and I think I really like the tangible aspect of the work we do. I think it’s hard not to be empathetic at the idea of somebody not having the basic essentials that they need. It’s also something that a lot of women have experienced in school – you’re caught off guard and you’re too nervous to go up and speak to the school and ask for something. To think that that is somebody’s daily occurrence and that they don’t have that choice, I think it’s hard not to resonate. Speaking to the people who’ve been impacted from our work just continues to be the driving force, and also working with Rochelle Courtenay, our founder. She’s so incredible passionate and it’s hard not to be motivated by her energy in the space.

What do you do to relax away from work?

I do aerials, kind of circus-in-the-air stuff, with silks and lyra. That’s probably my biggest way to decompress. It’s kind of the one time that my brain switches off. But also, working for a not-for-profit. I think if you weren’t passionate about it, obviously it isn’t always easy, but it would be a lot harder to do if there wasn’t the passion as the driving force behind it. I couldn’t imagine doing this for a big corporate just looking to make money. I don’t know how I would work so hard for an organisation I didn’t care about.

And what’s the story behind your blue hair?

It’s only recently been blue. It was originally purple or pink, as of a couple of weeks ago. I’ve had coloured hair probably since 2018. I just don’t feel me without it. When I first went for my job in journalism, I made it a neutral colour, to get the feelers out, whereas I went for the job at Share the Dignity with pink hair, and I had pink hair as an intern, and Rochelle just said I was on brand.