Social stigma

There's an issue around the world.

And what is period poverty? Period poverty is a global issue affecting women and girls who do not have access to safe, hygienic sanitary products and/or who are unable to manage their periods with dignity, sometimes due to community stigma and sanction.

Okay.

Well, I would've thought, one, Scotland is pretty, a first-world country, rich, right?

I fully agree.

My only concern would be some of the thinking, you know, some of the statements like, oh, there's this-

Community stigma

... stigma.

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Today's word is stigma, spelled S-T-I-G-M-A.

Stigma is a noun.

It refers to a set of negative and often unfair beliefs that a society or group of people have about something.

Here's the word used in a sentence from Business Insider.

Tattoos are now common.

But not long ago, adorning one's body with ink was frowned upon by much of mainstream society.

The roots of stigma trace back all the way to the Greek verb stizine, meaning to tattoo, which led to the Latin noun stigma, meaning mark or brand.

I'm your host, Lisa Cherry, and this is your time to sit back and listen in on conversations that make a difference.

Welcome to the Stigma series.

Yes, we're having an entire series on stigma.

And if you've not listened to any of the other episodes, then please go back, have a listen, because I know that you will really enjoy those.

They might have gone to prison, but they might have something that's discreditable, but not disclose it because it's not out there in the public domain anyway.

So I think that distinction was really important.

But one of the books that I read quite early on in my academic career was Imogen Tyler's Stigma.

I was just going to bring up Imogen Tyler because, of course, she talks about the arm being stamped.

It is your decision.

And then there's of course also the social stigma, because the social stigma has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades.

Whereas a couple of decades ago, smoking was seen as cool, and if you were not smoking, then you were not cool.

And that's also a reason why so many of my clients, who are now in their 40s and 50s and who are suffering from the first health issues related to smoking, why they started smoking in the first place.