In Bangladesh a large number of girls said they felt uncomfortable to go to school or travel during their period due to abdominal pain and the fear of leakage from rags. Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 28 2019 (IPS)

As menstruation continues to be shamed in many communities, one organisation is rising up to the challenge to ensure “safe menstruation for all women of Bangladesh.”

Half of the approximately four billion women around the world are of reproductive age. For these women and girls, menstruation is a natural monthly reality. However, a lack of awareness and access to basic health and hygiene products or facilities has turned this reality into a barrier in Bangladesh.

“Menstruation is not an openly discussed topic in Bangladeshi society due to cultural beliefs and social norms around the body and blood,” Executive Director of the Center for Research and Information (CRI) Sabbir Bin Shams told IPS.

“Lack of awareness, proper education, economic constraints lead to rising of ‘conservative’ behaviour which finally impedes lifestyle improvement among girls,” he added.

Approximately 95 percent of women in Bangladesh do not use sanitary napkins either because they are unavailable or unaffordable. Instead, women and girls often use old rags and husk sand which often cause severe reproductive health problems such as reproductive tract infections and cervical cancer.

According to the World Health Organization, cervical cancer is the second most common type of cancer in Bangladesh, with approximately 12,000 new cases detected every year and over 6,000 deaths due to the severity of the disease.

Kamrun Nesa Mira saw this firsthand after visiting a remote river island in Bangladesh. After suddenly getting her period, she could not find a shop to buy sanitary pads so turned to a local woman who gave her a piece of old cloth.

While Mira took the cloth as a temporary placeholder, she was shocked and concerned when the woman told her to cover the cloth with sand, realising that many rural women do not practice safe menstruation.

While visiting a nearby school, Mira also found that many girls don’t go to school while on their period.

In fact, 95 percent of girls said they felt uncomfortable to go to school or travel during their period due to abdominal pain and the fear of leakage from rags.

This prompted Mira to help establish the All for One Foundation which promotes positive hygiene practices and provide access to affordable sanitary products.

“A natural thing like menstruation cannot be the barrier towards female education and life expectancy. In this context, awareness activities by youth led organisation, All for One Foundation to educate girls and women of underprivileged communities about safe menstrual practices are important for the progress of Bangladesh,” Shams said.

The organisation provides menstrual hygiene education not only to girls to prepare them for their first period, but also to male students and parents in order to help break the taboo around menstruation.

“You cannot change the life of a person entirely, but at least you can guide her to the direction through which she can change her own,” Mira said.

In the fight to make sanitary napkins more affordable, All for One Foundation found that such products are deemed to be “luxury” products and have an imposed sales tax of 45 percent.

This means a pack of 8-10 sanitary napkins cost between 75 and 140 Bangladeshi Taka (BDT). However, a tea worker earns approximately 85 BDT per day, leaving many women unable to afford sanitary products.

The group has since raised awareness of the issue and has been pushing for a tax exemption at a national scale.

“Sanitary napkins ensure safe menstruation. Menstrual hygiene is a basic right. Menstruation is a health condition and not a disease. And thus, safe menstruation should be accessible to every woman,” said All for One Foundation on its website.

While the initiative is still small, it is growing and expanding its reach.

“If organisations and youths play more active and constructive roles in building awareness, social norms and practices can be altered gradually and which may lead Bangladesh to become an inclusive nation,” Shams told IPS.

Young Bangla, the largest youth platform in Bangladesh, recognised the outstanding contribution to society and awarded the All for One Foundation the Joy Bangla Youth Award in 2018.

In India, less than 10 percent of women and girls have access to sanitary products. Many are forced to seek alternatives, from old rags to newspapers. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 8 2019 (IPS)

It is time to rise up and fight a long neglected taboo: menstruation.

Marking International Women’s Day, United Nations human rights experts called on the international community to break taboos around menstruation, noting its impacts on women and girls’ human rights.

“Persistent harmful socio-cultural norms, stigma, misconceptions and taboos around menstruation, continue to lead to exclusion and discrimination of women and girls,” the experts from various mandates from cultural rights to violence against women said in a joint statement.

Among the experts is the Chair of the Working Group on discrimination against women in law and in practice Ivana Radačić who told IPS of the need to challenge the taboo.

“Even in the human rights community, it is either thought of as not so important or people did not understand how much discrimination exists still,” she said.

“We really feel that it is time to challenge the taboos and shame and to address the human rights issues that arise in respect to discrimination and stigma,” Radačić added.

Period-Shaming

Around the world, millions of women still lack access basic sanitary products to manage menstrual bleeding.

In India, less than 10 percent of women have access to sanitary products. Many are forced to seek alternatives, from old rags to newspapers.

The use of unsanitary materials often have health implications, including reproductive tract infections and cervical cancer.

The lack of adequate gender-sensitive facilities is another challenge, preventing women and girls from maintaining menstrual hygiene in a private, safe, and dignified manner.

According to the World Bank, at least 500 million women and girls lack such facilities, which severely impact girls’ attendance and participation in school.

In Nepal, 30 percent of girls report missing school during their periods.

This all stems from the idea that menstruation is “impure” and even often treated as an illness, resulting in the exclusion of women and girls in societies around the world.

“When combined with the stigma and shame that women and girls are made to feel during that time, it is truly disempowering,” the joint statement said.

When on their periods, many women and girls are not allowed to touch water or food and are restricted from entering religious or culture sites.

Chhaupadi, a practice still common in Nepal, restrict women and girls from entering her home, touching her parents, or going to school or temple. Instead, they are banished to a hut outside the main house for the duration of their period.

The U.N. has found reports of pneumonia, attacks from wild animals, and rape when women and girls are banished to a shed.

However, if a woman doesn’t follow the rules, she is told that she will bring destruction and misfortune to their family.

Though the Indian Supreme Court lifted the ban on women and girls of menstruating age from entering Sabarimala temple in Kerala, the move has sparked protests and violence by opponents, many of whom blocked women from entering the temple. 

“This idea of women being contaminated and impure—that then has an effect on how they feel and see themselves and how they see their own womanhood,” Radačić said.

Changing the Cycle

Many have already been working to shine a spotlight on the issue, including Plan International UK which has launched a period emoji, represented by a red droplet, as a way to overcome the silence around the natural monthly reality for billions of women worldwide. 

A new documentary, ‘Period. End of Sentence.’ which revealed the stigma of menstruation in rural communities in India, even won an Oscar.

Radačić noted that the documentary was “timely” and a good way to raise awareness to people in Western countries who may be unaware of the inaccessibility of hygienic and sanitary pads for many girls and women.

The documentary, directed by Rayka Zehtabchi, follows the installation and impacts of a low-cost sanitary napkin machine made by notorious “Pad Man” Arunachalam Muruganantham.

“The daughter never talks to the mother, the wife never talks to the husband, friends don’t talk to each other. Menstruation is the biggest taboo in my country,” he says in the documentary.

Inspired after seeing his wife use a rag for her menstrual bleedings, Muruganantham now provides pad machines to communities across the South Asian nation and trains women on how to use them, allowing them to establish their own business and sell affordable pads.

“The strong creation created by god in the world is not the lion, not the elephant, not the tiger—the girl,” Muruganantham said.

In the documentary, a group of women branded their sanitary products “Fly,” and with good reason.

“We have installed this machine for women. So now we want women to rise and fly,” one woman said.

Radačić also pointed to situations of conflict and crises, leaving many displaced and refugee women without access to sanitary products or even basic, private facilities.   

Organisations such as WoMena and CARE have started to address this gap, implementing a pilot project in the Rhino refugee camp in Northern Uganda which provided menstrual cups and reusable pads.

One girl who received a menstrual cup, which are reusable for up to 10 years, told CARE that she now feels more comfortable and has confidence as she plays sports and attends class during her period. 

In fact, a study from University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) found that providing free sanitary products and lessons about poverty increased girls’ attendance at school by 17 percent.

“There is more and more grassroots actions in certain communities and there is a celebration of the menstrual cycle, of the cyclical nature of a woman. I think it is a great time to really push this issue forward,” Radačić told IPS.

However, it is not enough to just provide sanitary pads, she noted.

Radačić highlighted the need for countries to abolish laws where women are excluded or restricted on the basis of menstruation, ensure access to hygienic products and gender-sensitive facilities, and teach comprehensive sexuality education to help break the taboo around periods.

“Much more has to be done to address the menstrual health needs of women and girls and to acknowledge that the failure to address them has a detrimental impact on all areas of women’s lives,” Radačić and others said.

Girls walk across an embankment in the Satkhira district of Bangladesh. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Mahfuzur Rahman
DHAKA, Mar 23 2017 (IPS)

Breaking taboos surrounding menstruation, a project to distribute sanitary napkins to girls in one district of Bangladesh has had a positive impact on school dropout rates – and should be replicated in other parts of the country, experts say.

“In Bangladesh, girls neither get enough support from their families nor their teachers in school during this difficult time, and their problems intensify and multiply as they cannot share anything out of shame,” Dr. Safura Khatun, a consultant at Mithapukur Health Complex in Bangladesh’s northern district of Rangpur, told the IPS on the sidelines of a five-day workshop.“There’s no reason to be sad when you reach puberty with some physical changes. Don’t be sad …it’s time to celebrate.” --Dr Dilara Begum

Inter Press Service (IPS), an international news agency, in collaboration with News Network, a non-profit media support organisation of Bangladesh, organised the workshop titled ‘Empowering Girls and Young Women Through Healthcare and Hygiene Support’ in Mithapukur sub-district on March 12-16, 2017.

Fifty teachers and students from 50 schools, colleges and madrasahs in Mithapukur joined the workshop.

“This is simply indescribable what a traumatic situation girls in Bangladesh society undergo for lack of understanding and care by families and schools. A small support during their monthly period may make a big difference in their everyday life, including education. But sharing of this still prevails as a taboo in our society, affecting the girls’ natural flourishing of their bodies and minds,” said Dr. Safura.

She stressed the importance of incorporating healthcare and hygiene issues in school curricula so that girl students may be aware of the necessary actions at the right time and overcome the shyness in sharing those with parents.

“Girls are definitely reluctant to share their physical issues and problems with their parents …this has to be changed,” she said.

Echoing Dr. Safura, another consultant, Dr. Sabiha Nazneen Poppy of Badarganj Health Complex, also in Mithapukur, said prejudice and family-level restrictions complicate girls’ physical problems, which ultimately hamper their education. “So, we need to give  serious attention to the problems girls face during their menstruation.”

If the girls are left on their own at this stage, Dr Sabiha said, they might complicate their physical problems, causing infections and inviting diseases using unhygienic homemade sanitary pads. “Spreading awareness is essential. So is the support.”

Thus was born the organisation ‘Labonya’, which means ‘beautiful’. Launched in 1998, Labonya has been distributing free sanitary napkins among secondary school students in Mithapukur, an initiative that has proven very effective, thanks to Mithapukur parliament member HN Ashequr Rahman.

“I’ve been noticing since the early 1990s that many girls in Mithapukur skip their classes for nearly a week every month during their menstruation,” Rahman said. “This hampers their academic activities and leads to dropout in many cases.”

“In 1998, I collected data about girl students of the schools in my constituency and found an alarming picture that 90 percent female students have virtually no idea about menstrual hygiene and this is the underlying reason why so many girls drop out,” he told IPS.

The lawmaker said they were not only dropping out but also suffering from various diseases stemming from using dirty clothes and other unhealthy means to manage their menstruation.

Rahman said they started providing sanitary napkins among 25,000 students – from 7th to 12^th grade – in all schools of Mithapukur. “Though we couldn’t provide the sanitary napkins every month for lack of funds, the project continued intermittently until 2001. It was suspended after the change of government following the national election in that year,” he explained.

When the current government took office in 2009, he said, he put the project back in place again, changing the scenario in Mithapukur, a sub-district which has about 500 educational institutions.

According to Rahman, the dropout rate of female students has been substantially reduced in the area with the growing awareness among students about the menstrual hygiene. “They now don’t skip classes during their menstruation. They’re also doing well in examinations.”

He said they will continue the project for another three years to make female students aware of how to manage menstrual hygiene with dignity.

Currently, ‘Labonno’ is providing around 28,500 students with a packet containing five sanitary napkins every month.

Rehana Ashequr Rahman, the head of ‘Labonya’ project, said, “If women remain sick, they cannot properly carry on their studies and they don’t have confidence to stand on their own feet. To help overcome lack of knowledge and awareness and change poor sanitary conditions prompted us to launch the project.

“Today’s girls are tomorrow’s mothers. If we can’t ensure their good health, the future generation will be at stake,” said Rehana, also the Vice-Chair of the Red Crescent Society. “This hands on and practical project should be scaled up all over Bangladesh.”

Mahmuda Nasrin, 40, a teacher of Balua High School in Mithapukur, impressed by the project, said, “It’s a very good project as it makes girls aware about their health and hygiene and explain how to share things overcoming all the prejudices.”

Mishrat Jahan Mim, 16, a tenth grader of Shalaipur High School, Nur-e-Jannat, 18, a twelfth grader of Balar Haat Adarsha Degree College and Irene Akhter, an eighth grader of Shalaipur High School said the project has changed their mindset about some taboos surrounding girl’s health and hygiene.

Speaking at one session of the workshop on March 15, Dr Dilara Begum, the librarian of East West University in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, told the girls: “There’s no reason to be sad when you reach puberty with some physical changes. Don’t be sad …it’s time to celebrate.”

She urged the teachers to work together to break prejudices that a wife cannot sleep with her husband during her menstruation and touch anyone while praying. “We need to make people aware and share the realities of life and its cycle to build a beautiful society taking women along,” she told the audience.