like even right now in Britain girls from low-income families are missing school because of their periods:
One pupil, who started her period aged 11, told BBC Radio Leeds that she had taped toilet roll to her underwear and missed school every month because she couldn’t access sanitary protection.
“I wrapped a sock around my underwear just to stop the bleeding, because I didn’t want to get shouted at,“ she said. “I once Sellotaped tissue to my underwear. I didn’t know what else to do.
“I didn’t get any money because my mum was a single parent and she had five mouths to feed, so there wasn’t much leftover money in the pot to be giving to us.”
Women in poverty here are using newspaper and old socks. Tina Leslie, who founded Freedom4Girls (a charity that provides sanitary protection in Kenya) said:
“I knew it was happening to homeless women and women accessing food banks, but not in schools. It’s something you don’t think about until somebody tells you.
“It is linked to poverty. In developing and third world countries it’s well-known that 60 per cent of women and girls don’t have access and they win five days of education, but it’s not widely known that it’s also an issue here in the UK. We knew it was happening, but not on what scale.
“There were 25,000 visits to food banks in Leeds alone last year. So if you’re at crisis point you go to a food bank and, like in Kenya, if you can’t afford food you can’t afford sanitary protection.
(fwiw the population of Leeds is 750,000.)
In America a model was fired from Hyundai last month for having her period. She wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom and consequently soiled her clothes, then was asked to go home “because of her “period situation,” according to her US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint.”
As she was being paid by the hour, Rickert wanted to carry on working. She protested but was told to go home.
Two days later, Seifred called Rickert and told her she was being fired “because Hyundai heard about Ms. Rickert having her menstrual cycle and they didn’t want Ms. Rickert representing the company anymore,” according to the EEOC complaint.
The situation is much, much worse in much of the world. In Nepal:
the practice of isolating women during their period [known as chhaupadi] exists across the country in differing forms… In some places, women cannot be in their own homes during their period; in others women can be in the house, but not in the kitchen and worship room. They are also forbidden from touching other people (especially male members of the family or neighbours) or cattle and from growing fruit and vegetables. Women become untouchable.
[in some parts] menstruating women are literally banished to a shed while they bleed.
Some of them die. Women subjected to chhaupadi are at risk of health problems, including pneumonia, suffocation, and sexual assault, during their menstruation. It is also blamed for prolonged depression, young women’s deaths and high infant mortality rates.
In urban India, 43% of girls use reusable cloth, yet they are often washed without soap or clean water.
Another study found that 88% of women in India use old fabric, rags or sand to manage their flow, because they cannot access or afford commercial sanitary pads
A study in Mukuru, Nairobi found that girls ages 10- 19 reported having sex with older men to afford basic needs like sanitary pads.
In another study, 73 percent of interviewed Bangladeshi garment workers reported they miss work for an average of six days per month (resulting in unpaid work days) due to vaginal infections caused by unsanitary menstrual materials. This is a loss that few can afford, particularly those who live on less than two dollars a day.
From the same link, according to UNICEF, 83 percent of girls in Burkina Faso and 77 percent in Niger have no place at school to change their sanitary menstrual materials.
1.25 billion women don’t have access to a toilet during menstruation!!
We need to end period stigma and increase access to sanitary protection worldwide.
Dignity Period, Femme International, and Freedom4Girls all accept financial donations. Can’t donate? Then keep talking about it!!
