In the previous entry (29 May 2025) I commented on two articles that apply WPR to policy relating to menstruation. Here, I follow up the earlier entry with consideration of the contribution by Koskenniemi, A. 2024. Extremely Private and Incredibly Public – Free Menstrual Products and the “Problem” of Menstruation in the Finnish Public Discourse, NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 2023, VOL. 31, NO. 4, 381–394 https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2023.2189301

I pay particular attention to the author’s innovative approach to policy materials for WPR analysis, and to the attention paid to deep-seated assumptions/presuppositions underpinning dominant representations of the menstruation “problem”. 

Brief Summary: 

The Koskenniemi article was prompted by the decision of the Helsinki City Council in December 2021 to experiment with the distribution of free menstrual products in schools and educational institutions, a practice seen in similar decisions on city and state levels around the world. It identifies the implicit problem representations in both the public documents and public debate on the initiative. The declared goal in the article is to understand how these problem representations potentially resist or contribute to the menstrual stigma. The article asks why menstruation should be concealed or stopped in the first place. Instead of focusing on painkillers to regulate pain, it emphasises the need to explore the reasons for and realities of living with menstrual pain, including work and schooling structures. Koskenniemi argues that, ultimately, addressing the menstrual stigma becomes a question of changing the societal approach to the menstrual cycle. 

Materials used:

Koskenniemi (2024: 385) explains that to address the issue of menstrual stigma she interrogates two forms of source material: (i) the policy documents related to the experimental distribution of free menstrual products and (ii) the online public debates on the Helskinki policy proposal. She notes that this use of public debates departs “somewhat from the conventional use of the WPR approach, which targets, in the main, policy documents”. We have already seen, in the previous entry, how McAllister et al. (2025) incorporate websites and press releases into the materials analysed in their WPR analysis of Global Health policy affecting menstruation. The suggested use of online debates provides an interesting development in WPR analysis. Koskenniemi (2024) makes a convincing argument that “governing” of menstruation takes place, not just through policies, but through societal norms. Hence, it becomes important to consider the generation of those norms. Online debates, in this context, act (to an extent) as prescriptive texts, or guides to action – making them available for a WPR analysis. 

There are, however, questions to be asked about how to treat the comments in online contributions to the debate. Specifically, there is a need to consider how the subjects contributing to the debate are constituted. Akin to the treatment of interview material, I suggest that to understand the subjects as constituted in discourse rather than as sovereign subjects requires asking how what is said could be said, how the content of the online contributions is “sayable”. Hence, it could be useful to apply the processes in PIA (Poststructural Interview Analysis) to the debate material, including a focus on transformative moments (see Bacchi and Bonham 2016; Bacchi and Goodwin 2025). 

Koskenniemi (2024: 386) explains the place of coding in her analysis. She coded “the materials inductively to familiarize myself with the materials and to explore what topics were discussed and what arguments provided for and against the Helsinki proposal”. She then applies WPR thinking, as explained in the next section. I argue in the entry on the distinctions between WPR and RTA (Reflexive Thematic Analysis; Research Hub 29 Jan. 2025) that it may be more analytically useful to reverse the order of these modes of analysis, applying the theory (WPR) first and subsequently organising the material into “themes”. The goal here is to protect against identifying “arguments for and against the Helskinki proposal” outside of WPR thinking – as if they are simply “there” waiting to be named. 

Applying WPR thinking: 

Koskenniemi (2024: 386) displays a clear understanding of how to apply WPR – that is, starting from proposals and “working backwards” to identify problem representations. She applies this thinking to her coded material: 

“Since the WPR-approach focuses on discovering problem representations through an analysis of proposals for action (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016, p. 18), I then went through all the coded quotations to determine proposals for action.” 

She proceeds to analyse the proposals and the arguments for and against them to determine the dominant problem representations in the materials. She notes here that the online material proved helpful in this task (see discussion of materials above). She states that “Finally, I explored potential effects of the problem representations”. The word “potential” in this sentence is curious and will be discussed below when I consider the issue of interpretive versus constitutive approaches to WPR.

Insights generated: 

Koskenniemi (2024) includes in this study reflections on the deep-seated assumptions and presuppositions underpinning the identified problem representations. In other words, this author explores Question 2 in WPR (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016: 20) in innovative and thought-provoking ways. Because Question 2 proves to be a stumbling block for many researchers, I elaborate how it proves useful in thinking differently about “menstruation”. 

There are (at least) two interconnected presuppositions that need attention – the dominant conception of equality in western industrialised society and conceptions of the body. The strength and ubiquity of an equal opportunity ethic needs to be emphasised. I have written about the repercussions of this view of equality in several places. For example, I have shown how it underpins a conception of affirmative action as “special treatment”, a conception that proves highly problematic for those supporting the reform. Further, an equal opportunity framing has subjectifying effects, at times dissuading women from pursuing affirmative action on the grounds that they wish to be judged “on their merit” (Bacchi 1996; 2004). 

There are suggestions in Koskenniemi that an equal opportunity ethic has repercussions for how “menstruation” is problematised. She (2024: 389) mentions that a common counterargument to the free provision of menstrual products involved the claim that cis males may be disadvantaged through the growing of beards and that “if girls [sic] are given free menstrual products, why then are boys [sic] not given something as well?”.  

I note the emphasis in many of the identified policies on the need to “manage” bleeding. The implication here is that, to “fit in”, bleeding needs to made to disappear or at least to be rendered invisible, to “allow one to pass as non-menstruating” (Koskenniemi 2024: 384). Such a stance is linked to a desire to make “women” (and others who bleed) fit into existing social arrangements – to make them “equal” (Koskenniemi 2024: 389) or at least to provide them with “equal opportunities”. Elsewhere I describe this stance as a “sameness” model (Bacchi 2025; Bacchi 1999, Chapter 5). 

The “sameness” model has trouble with bodies. Chris Beasley and I (2002) have written about the tension in the full range of policies to do with abortion and cosmetic surgery between two models of personhood – between those deemed to be in control of their bodies and those deemed to be controlled by their bodies. The latter are constituted “lesser citizens”. These are most often women. 

This argument provides a novel slant on the “menstruation” debates. It highlights how the level of analysis that is needed occurs within deep-seated ontological presuppositions (Question 2 in WPR). So long as “reforms” to refigure “menstruation” focus on ways for menstruators to control/manage their bleeding, so long will we perpetuate a limited view of embodied citizenship (Bacchi and Beasley 2002). Contestation needs to occur at this level of analysis. Koskenniemi (2024) pursues exactly this level of analysis. 

Koskenniemi (2024) also makes a useful contribution to thinking about the silences accompanying the “menstrual concealment imperative” (Wood 2020). She points out that the online debates reveal that the provision of free menstrual products is linked to environmental pollution. Importantly, this issue is not mentioned in the (formal) proposal. I have been asked on many occasions how to address Question 4 in WPR which asks about silences. Just how do you identify what is not mentioned? I have suggested several ways forward, primarily reading the critical literature and undertaking comparative analyses. The suggestion that other source material – here online debates – might prompt insights into issues that do not appear in official documentation promises to be helpful.

Koskeinniemi (2024: 390) notes that “the proposal merely states that ‘people should have the right to choose which products they use’”. This statement opens the way to highlight the underlying liberal framing of the “problem”, with a focus on “choice” and “rights”. The limitations of this view, given that such “equality” ignores people’s social location and the forms of products deemed to be commercially attractive (e.g. disposable), illustrates how Question 4 features as part of a WPR analysis.  

One final issue needs to be raised. It relates to the confusion between describing WPR as about competing interpretations versus the recognition of the performative effects of problem representations (see Research Hub entry 28 April 2025). Koskenniemi (2024) recognises the centrality of a performative perspective. She notes (2024: 385), for example, that the Helsinki city policy proposal and the ensuring debates produced the “gendered lives” of Helsinki citizens. However, she occasionally uses the language of “imagined” to describe the relationship between problem representations and effects. Here is one example. She notes that the “proposals for action revolve around the accessibility, visibility, and cost of products”: “The menstruating body is thus imagined as deficient and in need of public or private, but foremost, commercial management” (Koskenniemi 2024: 392; emphasis added). 

The point I wish to make is that the connection between problem representations and effects is much stronger than an “imagined” relationship. We are talking about how this representation of the “problem” produces “subjects” as particular kinds of subject, rather than “imagining” them as such. It is possible to make this argument without suggesting that these subjects are “determined”. 

When I followed up this point, I discovered that Koskenniemi (2024: 385) quoted me from a 2010 publication: “according to the WPR-approach, policy proposals ‘imagine’ both problems and people (Bacchi & Eveline, 2012, p. 111, 119–120). From this quote, you can see that in 2010 I still lapsed into a more interpretive stance. In my usage, quotation marks were inserted around “imagine” – quoted appropriately in Koskenniemi. However, Koskenniemi proceeds to drop the quotation marks (example above).

I would now not use the term “imagine” either with or without quotation marks, since the term implies that problem representations are simply “perceptions”. I hope by now you can see why I find that understanding unsatisfactory. Related to this same point, I mention above that Koskenniemi (2024: 386) refers to the potential effects of problem representations. The effects targeted in Question 5 of WPR – discursive, subjectification, lived – indicate ways of recognising the power of problem representations in shaping lives and worlds. These effects indicate what it means to say that we are governed through problem representations. To describe them as “potential effects” reduces the power and relevance of this argument. 

Conclusions:

I take great joy from reading applications of WPR. I learn a good deal about topics that I had previously neglected. I also gain insights into how people/researchers come to understand WPR and the reasons for these interpretations – often due to my own writing at different stages over the last decades. In other words, the contributions from others help WPR to stay alive and to foster a mode of self-interrogation that is useful.

All three of the articles on the topic of menstruation (this entry and those in the previous entry) draw a similar conclusion about how menstruation is problematised in global and Finnish health policy as a matter of health and hygiene. They are also keenly sensitive to the limitations of this problem representation. As mentioned in the last entry, WPR comes into its own through a critical lens, identifying what fails to be problematised and the politics involved in this failure. Politics in WPR captures the heterogenous strategic relations and practices that shape who we are and how we live. I trust that the three contributions on menstruation have encouraged a sensitivity to the complex of factors that need to be thought about in the active shaping or making of “menstruation”.

There was an item on the news (ABC Radio National) during this morning’s walk (20 January 2025) relating to a new report on women’s health that highlighted the large numbers of women who experienced severe pain during menstruation (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-20/problematic-periods-menstruation-womens-health/104825510). The question of “remedies” was raised. One suggestion endorsed “universal reproductive leave”. Contra this proposal, a spokeswoman made the point that what was needed was to fix the workplace, not to take women out of it. Thanks to the articles on menstruation that formed the basis of this and the previous entry, I felt better able to engage the topic at a meaningful level. I thank the authors for their work. 

Don’t forget to check out this recent article on menopause: Liana B. Winett & Louise Dalingwater (30 Mar 2025): “Women are hard to study”: US and UK National Legislator discourse on menopause-related research, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2483537 

References

Bacchi, C. (2004). Policy and discourse: challenging the construction of affirmative action as preferential treatment. Journal of European Public Policy, 11(1): 128-146.

Bacchi, C. 1996. The Politics of Affirmative Action: “Women”, Equality and Category Politics. London: Sage.

Bacchi, C. 1999. Women, Policy and Politics: The Construction of Policy Problems. London: Sage.

Bacchi, C. and Beasley, C. 2002. Citizen bodies: Is embodied citizenship a contradiction in terms? Critical Social Policy, 22(2).

Bacchi, C. and Bonham, J. 2016. “Appendix: Poststructural Interview Analysis: Politicizing ‘personhood’”, in C. Bacchi and S. Goodwin, Poststructural Policy Analysis: A guide to practice. NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2025. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. Second edition. (see chapter 8 on PIA by. Bacchi and Bonham). NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bacchi, C., & Eveline, J. (2012). Mainstreaming politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory. University of Adelaide Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9780980672381 

Bacchi, C and Goodwin, S. 2016. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bacchi, C. 2025. Same difference: Feminism and sexual difference. New York: Routledge.McAllister, J., Amery, F., Channon, M. and Thomson, J. 2025. Where is menstruation in global health policy? The need for a collective understanding. GLOBAL PUBLIC HEALTH