Sloane Stephens keen and candid about the subject of women’s health

Not everyone, Sloane Stephens accepts, is comfortable being as candid as she is when it comes to matters of women’s health.

“I’m just like, ‘Periods, yeah’,” Stephens tells the PA news agency.

We are talking in New York at Her Health Advantage, a panel event organised by the WTA and its title sponsor Hologic to discuss the issue of women’s health not just in sport but globally.

Since announcing a multi-year partnership with the American healthcare company in March, the WTA and its players have really bought into the concept of tennis as an agent for social change.

The figures revealed by Hologic’s Global Women’s Health Index are stark – more than 60 per cent of the women surveyed said they had not seen a doctor or healthcare provider in the last year while just 12 per cent were tested for any type of cancer.

“As a tour, being the biggest women’s sport, it’s super important for us to have someone who believes in the same thing we believe in,” says former US Open champion Stephens.

“Being able to focus more on women’s health, the recovery process, menstrual cycles, all of those things that aren’t really studied in women’s athletes, I think is important and obviously being able to be part of that as a tour – we all have some input and we all have data – I think it’s been a really good partnership.”

Tampons were invented by a man. That's so crazy to me.- Sloane Stephens

The subject of the impact of the menstrual cycle on female athletes has entered public discourse over the past year or two, with players from tennis and other sports opening up about the effect of periods and hormonal changes on performance.

The science still has some way to go but that something so fundamental to women’s everyday lives has been overlooked