Period poverty is a phrase that describes a financial and physical reality most people have never had to experience and most governments have been slow to address. In France, four million people face period poverty. 34% of European women have gone without menstrual products at least once in the past twelve months. For the poorest 10% of French women, menstrual hygiene spending can consume up to 5.5% of their monthly budget. Règles Élémentaires, France’s first and leading organisation fighting period poverty and menstrual taboo, and Serviceplan France found a way to make those figures felt rather than read.
The Campaign
The Weight of Period Poverty, known in French as Le Poids des Règles, was created by Serviceplan France for Règles Élémentaires in 2026. The campaign’s central idea was to give period poverty a physical weight: to translate the abstract financial burden of menstrual poverty into a tangible, measurable, holdable object.
The execution made the weight of a year’s worth of menstrual products the campaign’s primary creative material. The visual and physical tension of the campaign lies in the gap between what menstrual products should be, a basic healthcare necessity available to everyone, and what they actually are for millions of women in France and across Europe: a costly, sometimes unaffordable expenditure that competes with food, rent, and other essentials.
The Organisation Behind It
Règles Élémentaires was founded in 2015 by Tara Heuzé-Sarmini, who began by collecting donations of menstrual products at a concert and has built the organisation into France’s most prominent voice on period poverty and menstrual taboo. The NGO collects and redistributes menstrual products to women in precarious situations through a network of partner associations across France. It also conducts research in partnership with OpinionWay and runs educational workshops in French schools to break the taboo around menstruation from primary school age onward.
The organisation’s research has been central to shaping public policy on the issue. Règles Élémentaires coordinated research on period poverty across Europe presented to the European Parliament in Brussels in 2025, documenting for the first time that 42% of the 112 million menstruating people in the EU experienced period poverty in the previous year. In France specifically, the number of people affected by period poverty doubled from two million to four million between 2021 and 2023.
The French government has taken incremental steps toward addressing the issue. From 2024, under-26s and recipients of complementary health insurance (C2S) became eligible for reimbursement of reusable menstrual products, with up to 60% covered by the health system. Règles Élémentaires has noted the measure’s limitations: over three million women above the age of 26 are excluded, including the most precarious women, migrants, and heads of single-parent households. On International Women’s Day 2026, the organisation and over 40 partner associations published an open letter calling on the French government to honour its outstanding commitments on the issue.
The Recognition
The campaign won 2 Silvers and 2 Bronzes at the Clio Health Awards 2026, described by Stéphane Perrot at Serviceplan France as “4 medals for an action of weight,” with the wordplay on the campaign’s title deliberate. The campaign was also shortlisted in the PR category at Cannes Lions 2026, placing it among 113 campaigns selected from 1,151 entries in its category. The Cannes shortlist confirmed that the advertising industry recognised what the campaign had achieved: making a systemic financial injustice feel personal and physical rather than statistical.
Why the Format Works
Weight is one of the most immediately legible physical experiences available to an advertising campaign. Unlike colour, which requires sight, or sound, which requires hearing, weight is understood universally and bodily. Every person who has ever carried a heavy bag, lifted a full shopping basket, or held something heavier than expected understands the difference between something that costs nothing and something that has mass.
The Weight of Period Poverty translates period poverty from a figure in a research report into an experience of carrying something. The campaign does not need the viewer to do the arithmetic. It puts the arithmetic in their hands.
Règles Élémentaires is named for a pun: in French, règles means both rules and periods. The organisation’s name, which translates as “basic rules” or “basic periods,” captures the campaign’s founding argument in two words. Access to menstrual products is not a privilege. It is a basic requirement. The campaign’s visual and physical language extends that argument from the organisation’s name into an object that makes the requirement’s absence tangible.
Campaign Name: The Weight of Period Poverty / Le Poids des Règles
Agency Name: Serviceplan France
Brand Name: Règles Élémentaires
Location: France (2026)
