Menstruation In India: Addressing Health, Hygiene And Stigmas

There is need for a shift in the government’s policy discourse in order to prioritise menstrual health and hygiene for adolescent girls and women and it must be recognised as a major health issue

- Swati Saxena

INDIA HAS started talking about menstruation. Padman, a film about low cost and accessible sanitary napkins for all, had various celebrities posing with sanitary napkins on social media, normalising the discourse around it and urging to shed the stigma and myths around the same. It is not going to be an easy task. This was seen in the recent incident of cyber bullying of a young law student from Kerala after she posted a poem attacking taboos around menstruation.

Stigmas around menstruation go beyond denying entry to women in temples. They pervade their daily lives. Women on their periods are often not allowed to enter kitchens, worship rooms or even step outside their homes. They are not allowed to touch certain foods and many of their routine activities are simply hampered or barred.

The situation is much worse in rural India, where apart from stigmas women face the additional discomfort associated with lack of sanitary products. Low cost sanitary napkins are supposed to be procured from Accredited Social Health Activists or ASHAs, but more often than not, they are unavailable. Even if they are available, these are of poor quality, necessitating either expensive purchases from the market of better quality napkins or forcing women to use old rags and cloth. The latter is often unsanitary and causes infections and pain.