Tokyo 2020: The impact of menstrual cycles on female athletes

The Tokyo Olympics 2020 is being celebrated as the first ever gender-balanced Games in Olympic history, with 49% of athletes competing being female.

With a record 5,000 women participating, academics from the Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport shed light on some of the challenges athletes will be facing throughout the competition, including the management of their menstrual cycles and both the psychological and physiological impacts of being on their period when competing.

Dr Petra Kolić, Lecturer in Sports Coaching, and Dr Chris Morse, Reader in Exercise Physiology, explain how female athletes must not only ensure menstruation doesn’t impact their physical performance through planning and management of symptoms, but also how the stigma of being on their period adds additional pressure.

Dr Petra Kolic: Managing symptoms and stigma

All athletes competing at the Games will want to ensure that they are able to perform at their peak, but women may feel that their menstrual cycle, particularly if they are expected to be on their period when they are competing, could affect this.

Because of this, there is a certain amount of planning and preparation involved, whether that is ensuring that they aren’t bleeding when they are competing, or by managing their symptoms if they are.

However, this isn’t the only issue. One of the biggest challenges a woman will face is the fear of someone seeing signs of the period, for instance a menstrual product or even leaking menstrual blood.

There is a certain stigma associated with being on your period, which makes talking about it, managing it and changing behaviour including how we dress, all the more difficult.

Our research has shown that this is particularly problematic when exercising – with many women we have spoken to so far saying they either avoid physical activity all together during this time, change which activities they do or what clothes they wear.

Olympic athletes do not have this option, which is why this social stigma of being on your period creates a whole other issue on top of managing the actual symptoms.

Research into elite athletes has shown that although many are open to talk about their period, actually, when speaking to male coaching staff, they still feel there is a gender barrier and awkwardness around this.

This could have a negative impact on their ability to prepare for a competition and also mean they are more likely to be left alone to deal with planning their cycle, managing symptoms, ensuring they have access to menstrual products and other challenges that a male athlete simply wouldn’t have.

It also makes it far more difficult to have open discussions about performance and training in relation to their period. Symptoms, which vary from woman to woman, could include fatigue, bloating and backache – all of which can affect athletic performance.

Women need to be able to have open and honest conversations about their periods in relation to their performance in order to compete at their best, but this still isn’t happening.

You have to consider that if a female athlete were to retain an injury from, for example, overtraining, they would not feel the need to explain themselves if their performance was impacted, as it is clear that something has happened to their body that has affected them.

So even though a period is also underpinned by physiology, a biological process we go through, our research has shown that women feel uncomfortable admitting that their period impacts their performance and they therefore hide the fact that they are bleeding due to the associated stigma.

This situation wouldn’t arise for other normal physiological impairments they would experience.

Dr Chris Morse: Clothing constraints

Initial findings from our latest research have shown that more than two thirds of women have changed their clothing when performing physical activity whilst on their period.

This might mean wearing darker undershorts or more comfortable bottoms, essentially wearing clothes that make them feel most in control of their period – this is one strategy women have adopted to help them cope with the symptoms of their period and continue with physical activity.

But in the case of athletes at the Olympics or other sporting competitions, the constraints of certain uniforms might stop them from doing this. That is either the rules and regulations of what they must wear, or expectations of wearing certain things and of looking a certain way.

For example, at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, players must still wear white, and from the interviews we have done, we know that women would prefer to wear black bottoms when they are on their period.

It is only in the last four years that gymnasts have had the option to wear full leg coverings, but as we have seen from the Norwegian handball team, and para long jump, the constraints on women’s sporting attire goes beyond considerations for athlete performance.

While there are also regulations and expectations on men when it comes to clothing, men don’t have to mask menstrual bleeding, or hide their menstrual products, or worry about bleeding through – the stigma we know is associated with a female athlete competing on her period.

Essentially, what we are talking about is not just the physiology of a woman having a period, it is about a woman bleeding in an outfit which might make her feel embarrassed, out of control and uncomfortable.

Whether this occurs in full view of the public, in the run up to a pole vault or long jump, this is a problem that must be addressed.