This article shall talk about the discrimination against menstruating women is widespread in India, where periods have long been a taboo and considered impure. According to one study, only 36% of India’s 355 million menstruating females use sanitary napkins , while the rest use old rags, husk, ash, leaves, mud and soil and such other life-threatening materials to manage their flow.A woman’s menstrual health is crucial to her well-being and also to the well-being of her family and community. But too often — especially in the developing world — mindsets, customs and institutional biases prevent women from getting the menstrual health care they need. Menstrual hygiene continues to be amongst the most challenging development issues today. Menstruation is associated with the onset of puberty in girls and many a times, it brings with it rules, restrictions, isolation and changed expectations from the girls by the society. This changed attitude towards girls such as restrictions on their self expressions, schooling, mobility and freedom has far reaching consequences on the mindset of women. Menstruation is still considered a taboo in the Indian society. Even today, the cultural and social influences on people create a major hurdle in ensuring that the adolescent girls are given proper knowledge on menstrual hygiene. Mothers are also reluctant to talk about this topic with their daughters and many of them lack scientific knowledge on puberty. Culturally in many parts of India, menstruation is still considered to be dirty and impure. The origin of this myth dates back to the Vedic times and is often been linked to Indra’s slaying of Vritras. For, it has been declared in the Veda that guilt, of killing a brahmana-murder, appears every month as menstrual flow as women had taken upon themselves a part of Indra’s guilt. Further, in the Hindu faith, women are prohibited from participating in normal life while menstruating. She must be “purified” before she is allowed to return to her family and day to day chores of her life. However, scientifically it is known that the actual cause of menstruation is ovulation followed by missed chance of pregnancy that results in bleeding from the endometrial vessels and is followed by preparation of the next cycle. Therefore, there seems no reason for this notion to persist that menstruating women are “impure.” Many girls and women are subject to restrictions in their daily lives simply because they are menstruating. Not entering the “puja” room is the major restriction among urban girls whereas, not entering the kitchen is the main restriction among the rural girls during menstruation. Menstruating girls and women are also restricted from offering prayers and touching holy books.The underlying basis for this myth is also the cultural beliefs of impurity associated with menstruation. It is further believed that menstruating women are unhygienic and unclean and hence the food they prepare or handle can get contaminated. According to study by Kumar and Srivastava in 2011, participating women also reported that during menstruation the body emits some specific smell or ray, which turns preserved food bad. And, therefore, they are not allowed to touch sour foods like pickles. However, as long as general hygiene measures are taken into account, no scientific test has shown menstruation as the reason for spoilage of any food in making. Cultural norms and religious taboos on menstruation are often compounded by traditional associations with evil spirits, shame and embarrassment surrounding sexual reproduction. In some cultures, women bury their cloths used during menstruation to prevent them being used by evil spirits. Interestingly, in Asia including India, such beliefs are still practiced. However, there seems to be no logical or scientific explanation for this.In some parts of India, some strict dietary restrictions are also followed during menstruation such as sour food like curd, tamarind, and pickles are usually avoided by menstruating girls. It is believed that such foods will disturb or stop the menstrual flow. As far as the exercise is concerned, many studies in India and elsewhere have revealed that many adolescent girls believe that doing exercise/physical activity during menses aggravate the dysmenorrhea while in real exercise can help relieve the menstruating women with symptoms of premenstrual syndrome and dysmenorrhea and relieve bloating. Exercise also causes a release of serotonin, making one feel much happier. In some parts of India, perceptions of Hinduism center on notions of purity and pollution. Bodily excretions are believed to be polluting, as are the bodies when producing them. All women, regardless of their social caste, incur pollution through the bodily processes of menstruation and childbirth. Water is considered to be the most common medium of purification. The protection of water sources from such pollution, which is the physical manifestation of Hindu deities, is, therefore, a key concern. This highlights the possible reason why menstruating women are not allowed to take a bath especially for first few days of their menstrual period. It is believed that if a girl or women touches a cow while she is on her period, that the cow will become infertile – leading girls to associate their own bodies with curse and impurity. The main reasons for this taboo still being relevant in the Indian society are high rate of illiteracy especially in girls, poverty and lack of awareness about menstrual health and hygiene. Only less than 18 per cent of Indian women use sanitary pads. The latest National Family and Health Survey found that 58 per cent of young Indian women (15-24 years) use a hygienic method of protection (mostly sanitary pads), a significant increase from the 12 per cent using pads in 2010. The difficulty of accessing sanitary pads is another major issue. India scrapped a 12% tax on sanitary products in 2018 after months of campaigning by activists.Campaigners had argued that menstrual hygiene products were not a luxury and periods were not a choice that a woman could simply opt out of.However, tax exemption is only a small step towards a much longer journey of making menstrual health and hygiene an accessible reality for every woman in the country. This is, no doubt, a consequence of greater attention to menstrual hygiene management over the past few years in India. This not only prevails in the Indian society but is a global issue. From an early age, girls learn to live with the pain and fear and seldom do we see a girl seek help when in physical or mental discomfort due to periods. But with a surge in the use of social media in recent years, women have begun sharing their stories about menstruation too.Yet this freedom is often questioned and those sharing their stories are threatened with bans, while trolls who indulge in moral policing and shaming women go scot-free.Perhaps the more critical issue is that menstrual health experts say the current coronavirus crisis has worsened matters further in India. The country is under a strict lockdown which has severely impacted production and supplies of menstrual hygiene products. Access to menstrual hygiene products for Indian women, especially those in rural areas, has been severely impacted due to the coronavirus pandemic and closure of educational institutions and community organisations has further compounded the problem, a study has found.The pandemic has also disrupted the production of menstrual hygiene products, with many small and medium scale manufacturing units facing a shortage of labour, raw material and working capital, it said.
KEY CHALLENGES RELATED TO MENSTRUAL HYGIENE
1. Continuing taboos and restrictions related to menstruation.
2. Limited access to sanitary pads.
3. Limited access to social support.
4. Restricted access to sanitation facilities.
5. Anxiety and stress over how to manage menstruation.
6. Disrupted manufacturing of menstrual hygiene products.
7. Broken supply chains for menstrual hygiene products.
The result of the above factors found by one of the surveys was that most girls and women began to switch to cloth pads.
How do you maintain Period Hygiene? The Problem with Using Cloth Pads
How do you maintain period hygiene when you have no safe access to sanitary pads or sanitation facilities? A relevant area of concern.
A common problem linked to the use of cloth pads is that those who use it do not have adequate information on how to maintain the cloth they are using so that they are not infected later. In fact, using cloth pads without knowing how to maintain it poses danger to a woman’s health and they risk infections of a grave nature. In relief camps and shelters where food and water are of primary concern, and in quarantine and isolation facilities where testing kits and essential medicines are the necessity, menstrual products for women are not considered an essential item.
Female migrants on the road and women in quarantine or isolation facilities may experience discrimination and stigma more acutely owing to their menses. Women and girls may use their menstrual products for longer than recommended, or turn to unhygienic alternatives such as old cloth or rags. Irrespective of what is used, changing menstrual products regularly, washing reusable cloth pads, cleaning the body, and disposing of used materials, is now more challenging than usual. In slums, where many are dependent on community toilets, social distancing measures and mobility restrictions makes it difficult for girls and women to use toilets as frequently as they need to during their period. In rural areas, procuring additional water for washing related needs during menstruation may be a barrier. Privacy to change materials frequently and to discard them is impinged upon for urban and rural residents alike. For women migrants, managing periods on the long and tough road home without access to any type of amenity is an unimaginable difficulty. Limited availability of menstrual hygiene products and inability to maintain hygiene can affect the health of menstruators adversely. Strikingly, poor and affluent women alike, express anxiety over limited supplies for themselves and female family members.
Menstrual materials are worn for longer than they should be, simply to extend availability of limited stock to deal with restricted mobility, increasing the risk of reproductive tract infections (RTI). Reusable cloth pads, while a good alternative, may not be washed and dried thoroughly due to paucity of water and privacy, posing additional risks for infections.Women do not seek required healthcare for RTIs even under normal circumstances. With non-essential health services curtailed and frontline health workers focused on the pandemic response activities, RTI symptoms resulting from poor menstrual hygiene are likely to go unaddressed. Hence, action for ensuring access to safe menstrual products and information on menstrual hygiene are critical.
To deal with this crisis and to ease the problem of girls and women specially in the rural areas, I started an NGO called NAARI which aims to deal with stigmas related to menstruation and also distributes sanitary napkins to women. This journey started in the month of September and we have now reached almost 3000 women across two states, namely Jharkhand and West Bengal. We also conduct various sensitization programs amongst girls and women and the objective of this holistic sensitisation programme is accomplished through integrated awareness, motivation and meditation programmes. It provides them with know-how on how to handle menstruation, improve knowledge of personal hygiene and boost confidence by answering unanswered questions through interactive and engaging training methods.
We have taken this step because we were aware that this it is an important issue among underprivileged families specially during this pandemic and we aim to reach out to more number of women to provide them with sanitary napkins regularly.