Thatcher Mweu is a high school sophomore at Choate Rosemary Hall, a prestigious New England boarding school. Two years ago, she was living in a rural Kenyan village. Introducing the new class of 2011, Choate's headmaster told the school of its deepening diversity--there was a girl who had never been in an elevator before. What he didn't know is that Thatcher had never seen a tampon before, either.
Despite the fact that half the world menstruates, most people overlook the serious repercussions of a lack of affordable sanitary supplies in developing countries. The reason? Most people don't know that it is a problem. Others find the subject embarrassing. Even those who do understand think there are more pressing problems at hand. Why spend money on pads when AIDS remains to be solved, when countries desperately need infrastructure, when the economy is collapsing? Because it turns out that providing pads does much more than prevent embarrassing stains. It is a simple solution that can change the standing of a gender, and thus an economy, across a continent.
In the US, sanitary pads first became widespread in 1921, tampons in 1936. As a result girls and women had the opportunity to fully participate in school, sports, and the workforce. These products equaled freedom. And this is why many women say tampons are one of the greatest inventions of all time. They effectively reduced the inconvenience, opportunity cost, and stigma of menstruation.
But in developing countries, periods continue to be a serious handicap. According to UNICEF, ten percent of school-age African girls miss school because of a lack of access to affordable sanitary products. In Rwanda, it's much worse. According to on-the-ground research by Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), half the girls are missing school due to menstruation and the main reason given is that sanitary pads are too expensive. For women, 24% miss work--up to 45 days per year--for the same reason. This not only limits girls' educational and women's professional achievement, but leads to a significant economic loss for nations. SHE estimates that a lack of affordable sanitary pads reduces GDP by $115 million per year in Rwanda alone.
There are also serious health repercussions of not having pads. In Asia, many women still use rags; less fortunate ones use newspapers, banana leaves, even sand or ash. While rags were common before the pad was invented, the problem in developing countries is that often women don't have access to clean water to wash them. And the taboo of menstruation means that many women cannot hang their rags to dry in the open. So, instead, they hide them in dark, damp places where no one will find them. As one might imagine, infections are rampant.
The first step is to destigmatize menstruation. Bringing periods into the open won't be easy. The taboo of menstruation is embedded in our religions, culture, and history. The Quran declares that menstruating women "are a hurt and a pollution." Indian women are exiled from their own homes. Orthodox Jewish women are forbidden to have sex. French housewives can't make mayonnaise. In ancient Rome, Pliny the Elder wrote that contact with menstrual blood "turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, ..., the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled." Today, Pliny seems ridiculous, but discrimination and ignorance remain.
To change attitudes means breaking the silence. Our hope is that this article will help start a dialogue with the women and men around you. Almost every woman remembers her first period--where and when it happened, who, if anyone, she told, and even what she was wearing. Girls should know the stories of the women in their family. Sharing these stories will help mothers and daughters (and dads, too) talk more openly about this natural process.
Equally important is to change the economy of menstruation. Sanitary pads should be affordable and safe. This is an investment not only in women, but economies.
Thirty years ago, Gloria Steinem published one of her most famous essays, If Men Could Menstruate. There would be no taboos. Men would brag about how long and how much. And sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. It's time we do a better job helping our sisters around the world. P&G is contributing $5 million over five years to provide sanity supplies in Africa. SHE is jump-starting local businesses to produce affordable sanitary supplies around the globe. Individually, we can all help end the taboo by talking. These are the ways to truly celebrate International Women's Day.
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So while I support assisting women everywhere to good sanitary protection, I also favor supporting women who choose rest and care for their bodies. Schools can support this by preparing lessons girls can complete at home and workplaces might also fashion a solution for women who need that down time. If leave is allowed for maternity reasons it should be feasible to support women in this too.
Daily use of low dose combo (estrogen/progesterone) pills can be taken safely indefinitely and
will prevent periods and pregnancy. My gynocologist says that this secret has been known
since the 1960's but most women are not informed about this option. She says that having a
period every month for 30 years is unnatural, women were designed to be pregnant or lactating
most of that time. If you don't want that, it is actually more natural and safer to stay on a
constant low dose of hormones. It will also lower your chance of uterine and ovarian cancer,
since these organs will not be cycling for 30 years. So if affordable, generic birth control pills
that have an active dose in every pill were made available to women around the world, that
could be cheaper and simpler and allow them to remain productive. When they are ready to
plan a child, they just stop taking the pills. I also believe that poverty could be wiped out
world-wide in one generation if women delayed having a child until they were 30 or had the
money and resources to support one. Universal access to affordable birth control pills could
make this a reality in our life time.
Once upon a time, when we were hunters and gatherers, women did not have periods while breastfeeding, up to three or four years. Nature made sure women didn't have to carry two babies from camp to camp. Settling down with a sufficient diet with plenty of carbohydrates changed that.
So staying on the pill for too long can be problematic. So I disagree with you that " it is actually more natural and safer to stay on a constant low dose of hormones".
The value added tax on pads and other fem hygiene products continues to be a problem. While some countries have abolished them, others continue to tax these products 10-20%. There's definitely an opportunity for governments around the world to get involved in exactly what we are discussing today by changing their tax policies.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45797
"Bagging papyrus - women are creating livelihoods and providing an affordable alternative for menstrual hygiene.... the manufacturing process for these innovative pads was developed by Dr Moses Kiiza Musaazi at Makerere University in Kampala. Refugees at Kyaka 2 make around a thousand pads a day using nothing more than reeds harvested from a nearby swamp, waste paper and water, processed with human-powered machinery designed and manufactured by the Faculty of Technology at Makerere"
Helping girls in Africa is fantastic but we must start raising awareness that this is a problem in the US as well.
I've no love for the things but I absolutely hated pads and I'll keep using tampons unless I can find something better.
Something not addressed in the article is that HIV+ women are in an even greater quandary-- their menstrual blood is (I think still) considered a biohazard. So clean water should be the world's agenda.
Through Rotary, I helped launch the National Sanitary Towels Campaign (2005), and sit on the National Sanitary Towels Campaign Coordinating Committee. I began ZanaAfrica (2007) to find the tools (= “Zana” in Kiswahili) within Africa to solve challenges of poverty. We’re working with local inventors to improve and scale up their products. We as the West have so much to learn from African innovations.
Our affordable pads are organic, fair trade, and can be used as fertilizer. Every woman goes through 7 lbs of sanitary pads in just a year. It would be truly deplorable of us in the West to promote sanitary pads neither from local resources nor environmentally friendly.
ZanaA is further advocating 1) for the Ministry of Education to budget for sanitary pads as a basic school supply for girls and 2) the East Africa Bureau of Standards to include waste management as a requirement for all sanitary pads and diapers.
Only 26 girls scored in the top 100 in this year’s high school results, yet 46% of students are girls. Menstruation is a major cause of poor performance: 868,000 girls lose 3.5 million learning days every month. They can reach their destiny, but they must have the tools to do so.
www.zanaafrica.org.
p.s. the link above for www.zanaafrica.org needs to lose the period at the end
For my part, I usually refrain from barking like a seal and whacking my palms together just because my television told me to.
Sure, females make up a little over half of the world's population. But not all females menstruate. For example, only one of my three daughters menstruates. My mother no longer menstruates. My great aunt no longer menstruates. Two of my nieces do not menstrutate.
Children and post-menopausal females knock that figure down to just over a third.
11:05am
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I have never used a Diva Cup or Keeper (don't need any of that stuff any more) but yours sounds like a better idea to me because of disposal issues as well as costs.
I have always wondered how women in 3rd World countries coped with this issue. Not very well, I figured.
Birth control "placebos" (which cause menstruation) are, as I understand them, a male inventor's way of throwing up his hands and saying, "Well, I don't have time to investigate the effects of shutting off menstruation, so I'm just going to leave it alone."
Fact is, menstruation gets shut off naturally for 9 months at a time.
I'm not suggesting hormonal birth control is for everyone. But for those who are comfortably on it, I wonder why you are so protective of this agonizing ritual.
I can't remember exactly what show I was watching, but it was something about pioneer women, and I was watching it with a female friend of mine. After the show, she asked, "I wonder what it was like to have periods back then? Can you imagine being in a covered wagon, traveling across the plains, mountains, and deserts, while having your period?" I laughed and told her that she was the only other woman I knew, other than myself, who wondered those kinds of things, while watching shows about pioneer women. LOL! We concluded that history books would probably never reveal the answer.
Anyway, enlightening blog, so thanks for this, and keep up the good work on women's issues! I now have a couple more charities to check out :).