Fighting ignorance and taboos around ‘periods’ even more important than sanitary napkins

Over the centuries, one of the ugliest aspects of deeply embedded patriarchy is the inhuman treatment of a natural biological phenomenon in women- menstruation. Still, widely viewed as a ‘shameful, unclean secret’, the crass and cruel approach to menstruation is encapsulated in this Garrison cynical quote “I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days, and doesn't die.” The society's generally hostile neglect, allied with the shame and lack of knowledge on the subject have wreaked havoc on the health and development of women.

Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) is a lonely battle for women in India. And for those living in urban slums and distant far-flung rural areas, it is a ‘period’ of trauma. Societal apathy, the taboo shrouding menstruation and the governmental neglect are the main causes of ‘period poverty’ in our country.

During the recent lockdown, nearly 84% of women had restricted or no access to menstrual products and were left with no choices, but to risk adopting unsanitary methods. But at the same time, there was no dearth of masks and hand sanitisers as the country ensured its availability. How unfortunate, that it took a pandemic and a lot of hue and cry, to draw the government’s attention to include sanitary products also in the list of essential items to permit its manufacturing during the lockdown.

With approximately 355 million menstruating women, the country faces a herculean task of ensuring availability, accessibility, awareness, and affordability of sustainable menstrual products and scaling up investments in WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) infrastructure. With all seriousness, the subject has to be treated as a health and human rights issue.

Information on menstruation in public and private spaces generally remains clouded. Shockingly, only 48% of Indian girls come to know of menstruation when they get their first periods. No wonder only 36% of 355 million menstruating women use napkins (NFHS-2016). This leaves out many marginalised women to adopt unsanitary means like using cloth, rags, ash, husk; making them vulnerable to Reproductive Tract Infections (RTIs), infertility, cervical cancer, HIV/AIDS, etc.

The lack of information and societal indifference to menstrual hygiene was starkly visible in Delhi’s Ashok Nagar, where bundles of sanitary pads were found lying on the shop floor of Jan Aushadhi Kendras, as women in dire need of the products, were not even aware of its availability. While social media has played a positive role in creating awareness on safe menstrual hygiene, it has excluded the poor, marginalised and low-income groups. Campaigns, therefore, necessarily have to cover this excluded group.

For menstrual hygiene, easy access to functioning toilets, clean water, private spaces at home, schools and public places are the very essentials. Tragically even in the national capital, there are only 132 public toilets for women, as compared to 1534 for men. As per CAG, almost 75% of toilets audited in 15 states were not usable and separate toilets for boys and girls were not available.

Report by Dasra (2014) suggests that almost 23 million girls drop out of school annually, when their periods start, due to the lack of facilities. The lockdown further worsened the situation as the school going girls stopped getting their monthly supply of pads, and fell back on the old unsanitary methods. Studies from previous pandemics have shown that school closures and drop-outs contribute alarmingly, to an increase in child marriages and trafficking cases; thereby, compromising their health, education and overall development.

The taboo, myths and misinformation on menstruation keep the stigma alive as we continue to speak in hushed tones. Girls, women, transgender and intersex people, particularly from poor socio-economic backgrounds, find it difficult to share their concerns on menstruation.

As per a 2016 study, 76% of women still consider it to be ‘dirty'. A menstruating woman is viewed as being ‘impure’, ‘polluted’, and prevented from entering kitchens, visiting temples, attending cultural events, touching holy books and preserved foods. Dipankar Gupta’s concept of separation of the ‘pure’ from the ‘polluted’ aptly explains this discrimination against women resulting predominantly from socio-cultural and religious practices. These myths and stigmas violate women’s right to health, equality, privacy, and bodily integrity. It creates an invisible social restriction to their easy access to education, vocation and equal opportunities. As a result, their overall human development gets stunted. This will also perpetuate inter-generational gender inequalities and subordination at family and community levels.

Unfortunately, most discussions at home, focus on the taboos, and restrictions, and rarely on addressing the stigma and its devastating impact on perceptible young minds. The socialization process at home and in society pressurizes women to believe repressive gender norms as the defined and acceptable codes of conduct. To break the cycle of systematic discrimination, homes should be the first place to question these taboos and make conversations on menstruation normal. Society, government, and educational institutions have to work earnestly to educate and sensitize both males and females to deconstruct the existing socially constructed gender norms.

Grassroot level campaigns need to take into account the social, and cultural context to effectively dismantle the stigma attached to menstruation. Isn’t it unfortunate that in the 21st century India we are still debating whether and how this important subject should be brought out of the societal shroud and discussed openly at the familial, societal, and national level?

Our honourable Prime Minister has garnered huge applause for invoking the subject of availability and affordability of sanitary pads in his last Independence Day speech. But the more important issues of confronting the stigmas, the taboos and the pervasive ignorance associated with this traumatic ‘period’ for women, remain unaddressed. Governments have barely been present in this battle.

It has to be understood that menstrual hygiene management seeks a very comprehensive action plan to address the intersectionality of menstruation; cutting across health, society, culture, infrastructure and the environment. The long path to women's emancipation is extremely challenging, and it may take many iconoclasts to unshackle them from the age-old societal stranglehold of taboos, stigma and social control.

(The writer, an alumnus of London School of Economics and Delhi School of Economics, is currently working with Women Power Connect. Views are personal)