Menstruation and dignity
I started out pondering about equal rights in India after watching Mrs America, but the very next day I saw a front-page newspaper article on the government sanitary napkin scheme. It has been dropped from the state budget in Karnataka this year; no apology, no explanation. Nothing like dereliction of duty to focus my mind on the period and all its baggage, not just napkins, oh no. I have to ask, can there be dignity, leave alone equality, without access to sanitation, timely information and personal hygiene?
I first heard about it in a hushed and horrified conversation in the girls’ toilet in school, and pooh-poohed the very idea of bleeding once a month, so very confident that my family, my mother, someone, would tell me about it if it was true. Not a year later, I was still unbelieving, “Oh my God! I lost control of my bowel!” I was staying with family friends. What followed was humiliating, giggles from my older friend, a kind talk from her mother and I returned home bitter with knowledge and very, very angry with my mother. It would be even longer before I heard the term ‘menstruation,’ or understood the biology of it.
That was 48 years ago. It still isn’t a lot better in Indian homes, mostly rural but also urban. Take for instance, the 1.7 million adolescent girls, dependent on the state subsidy for the purchase of sanitary napkins, now left pad-less. The budget cut came before the country recorded its first Covid 19 case, so it has nothing to do with the present strain on the economy. While efforts are on to reinstate the Shuchi scheme, as it is called, the setback to Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) is incalculable. Social change takes a long, long time and political will, even longer.
Further reading only unfolds the magnitude of the problem. It’s not just India; MHM and how it impacts women’s health is a worldwide problem. Ignorance, social taboos, lack of information and guidance, shortage of water and dearth of sanitary napkins can and often do result in urinary tract and bacterial infections, pain, sometimes infertility and most ignominious of all, shame.
Women form almost 50 percent of the world’s population. Their health is half this world’s health. Their struggle for basic amenities, liberty, equality and dignity, should be the whole world’s concern. As a UNICEF guide clarifies, “The biological fact of menstruation, the necessity of managing menstruation, and society’s response to menstruation is linked with women and girls’ human rights and gender equality.”
More than 20 years ago, I remember my shock at reading a Non-Governmental Organisation’s (NGO) report on menstrual practice in poor communities in the Thar desert, where both water and cloth are in short supply. These women fashioned pads filled with readily available desert sand. The cloth was used till it practically disintegrated. Washing was infrequent; because water had to be conserved, and because the cloth had to be hidden under other clothes to dry. As recently as 2013, Times of India (TOI) reported from Amritsar that women were still using old socks filled with sand, ash, and sawdust for pads and washing themselves with contaminated water. Most developed infections in varying degree.
Today, NGO outreach has improved and there are many organisations filling the blank space with information, sustainable practices and encouraging communities to break their silence on a normal process that has been surrounded by an abnormal hush. Some of these organisations have started in a small way, a group of college friends here, a kiosk there, but they all have one common aim: to break the silence and open a dialogue that improves the lives of girls and women.
For too long, menstruation has been associated with shame, even worse, uncleanliness. Even today, even in educated and otherwise enlightened homes, women are not allowed to participate in prayers, in the temple and at home, or allowed to enter a kitchen when they are menstruating. The practice is so ingrained that not even women question its legitimacy. In one conservative family, I learned that come the period, the wife was banished from the conjugal bed to sleep on a RexineTM sofa for the duration.
Why do we stand for this? Why are mothers ‘mum’ on the subject till their daughters come crying to them that they are bleeding to death? What will it take to change? Activists believe dialogue is the first step. Their work with the underprivileged, in cities and villages is empowering girls and women with knowledge. Made aware of the difference between disposable and sustainable materials, women are also encouraged to make and sell cloth pads. The difference lies in a woman’s own perception — from a passive victim of systemic social injustice, she can become the arbiter of her own fate. This is a powerful shift in the narrative perspective and so very heartening.
The names of these organisations reflect their passion: Code Red, Cochin; A Period of Sharing, Dahanu in Maharashtra; Green the Red that started in Bangalore, but counts followers across India; Shomota, Kolkata; EcoFemme, Auroville; Uger in Udaipur; #HappytoBleed, Patiala and interestingly, The Red Cycle, Kozhikode, Kerala, started in 2015 by Arjun Unnikrishnan, who is aiming for change at a policy level, making menstrual health a collective responsibility, not just a ‘women’s problem.’