Menstrual Hygiene Day’ is being celebrated on May 28 since 2014. The number 28 refers to the average days of the menstrual cycle, and 5 refers to the average amount of days a woman or girl experiences menstruation in a month.
Regular menstruation signals a woman’s health and fertility and is a biological process. But unfortunately all over the world this natural biological process is surrounded by shame, secrecy, embarrassment, fear, humiliation, silence, taboo, and stigma- often grounded in patriarchal assumptions.
According to Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) on any given day 300 million women and girls worldwide will be menstruating. Most of these women and girls will menstruate every month for two to seven days, thus on an average for 3,000 days over their lifetime. Though a woman/ girl has to deal with menstruation process for almost 30 to 35 years of lifespan, yet, she does not have any scope to discuss about it - what are the issues, how it is managed, how it affects her etc.
The taboo and silence around menstruation make menstruation a non-issue. Despite making up half of the population, women’s menstrual hygiene requirements are overlooked and neglected, sometimes even deliberately ignored. This low priority and lack of attention at all levels - from international policy-making to the private sphere - has devastating impacts on women and girls’ lives. It prevents women from reaching their full potential and achieving gender equality. Women and girls lose days of school and work with far-reaching implications for their education, well-being, and livelihoods. They are subjected to cultural prescriptions that sometime amount to harmful practices and severely curtail their freedom and mobility.
The taboos and socio-cultural restrictions resulting in adolescent girls and ladies remaining ignorant of the hygienic health practices have an adverse health outcome. Menstruating women and girls are isolated into separate huts or cowsheds. Other restrictions menstruating girls and women face include not being allowed to prepare food, wash their bodies, or enter places of worship. Many think that they should not touch anything during menstruation as they are not pure. Obviously when there is so much ignorance, so much taboos about menstruation, menstrual hygiene is ignored. And when menstrual hygiene is ignored, women’s health is bound to be affected.
Hygiene related practices of women during menstruation is one of the important part of whole hygiene practices, as it has a health impact in terms of increased vulnerability of reproductive tract infection (RTI). Yet in many cultures, it is treated as something negative, shameful or dirty. The continued silence around menstruation combined with limited access to information at home and in schools results in millions of women and girls having very little knowledge about what is happening to their bodies when they menstruate and how to deal with it. A study from WaterAid in India revealed that 63 percent adolescent girls were completely ignorant about menstruation before they attain menarche. Only 37 per cent adolescent girls knew about menarche. It is observed that most of the girls knew about menarche through their friends.
This shows that it is still a taboo to talk about menstruation and many a time, families discourage discussions. This is compounded by ignorance of the mothers. The study further revealed that girls are typically absent for 20 per cent of the school year due to menstruation, which is the second major reason for girls to miss schools. Keeping girls in school, thus delaying early marriage and pregnancy, has the potential to add $100 billion to India’s GDP over their lifetimes. Furthermore, 88 per cent of menstruating women in India use home-grown alternatives like old fabric, rags, sand, ash, wood-shavings, newspapers, dried leaves, hay and plastic to manage their menstruation. Around 63 lakhs adolescent girls live in homes without toilets, and have to manage their periods out in open, risking health, security and happiness.
lack of information, poor access to safe tools for menstrual management, absence of support from families and lack of functional toilets are prime reasons behind menstrual crisis.
Increased knowledge about menstruation and menstrual hygiene may help in mitigating the suffering of women to a large extent. Bringing to right the ways menstrual hygiene impacts education, health, the economy, the environment and human rights is the need of the hour. But, to ensure the above stated status, it is absolutely essential to break the myths, stigma and taboos compounded with socio-cultural practices in regard to menstruation across the corner. And for this, it is rather more essential to start discussing about the issue.
Better late than never! let us talk about the issue related to menstrual hygiene management and break the silence. Our concerted effort can create a world in which every woman and girl can manage her menstruation hygienically, in privacy, in safety and with dignity - where ever she is.
(The author works with the WaterAid India, Bhubaneswar. However, the views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily of the organisation)