“It is certain that men will be born as bullocks in their next life if they consume food cooked by menstruating women. I don’t care if you do not like my views, but this is written in our Shastras [scriptures]. If a menstruating woman cooks food for her husband, she will definitely be born as a female dog in her next life,” the religious leader said while delivering a sermon in Gujarati. The video of this manufactured truth had gone viral.
Menstruation is a process where the menstruator sheds the inner lining of her uterus. The average duration of a menstrual cycle is about 28 days lasting about 5 days, though both the cycle and duration may vary in length.
Even though menstruation is a normal biological process, it is surrounded by a stigma that both reflects and reinforces women’s perceived lower status to men in India. Stigmatization involves identifying and marking an undesirable characteristic in a way that reduces a person’s social identity to that characteristic. This leads to marginalization and in some cases dehumanization. This stigma is supported and propagated by culture, media, social norms, cultural myths, and the environment surrounding the woman. The way a girl is treated during her menarche and the behaviour of people around her helps to build her perception towards menstruation, menstrual health, and menstruators.
Women’s practices around menstruation are of considerable importance as they can lead to increased vulnerability for reproductive tract infections. In 2012, the JMP(WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Drinking Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) defined Menstrual Hygiene Management as “A practice through which women and adolescent girls are using a clean menstrual management material to absorb or collect menstrual blood, that can be changed in privacy as often as necessary for the duration of a menstrual period, using soap and water for washing the body as required, and having access to facilities to dispose of used menstrual management materials.”
A multiplicity of variables working independently and in tandem affects the perception and behavioural choices of women and girls towards their menstrual health.
Lack of Awareness and Biological Misconceptions
Due to the stigma attached to the period, there is an air of discreteness associated with it. Heuristics of stigma are such that the effect of the stigma acts as a cause to further it in society. Lack of education about menstruation in schools or at home leads to a lack of awareness among girls. Many girls, on the onset of menarche, are confused and scared about what is happening to their bodies. Many assume to have caught some deadly disease. Rampant misinformation is also present among girls, and bonds of friendships between girls in schools or in their community act as a chain to further the wildfire of this misinformation. One common belief among girls and women is of period blood being dirty. Most don’t know where period blood comes from while some believe period blood to be dirty blood oozing out of the lungs.
Cultural and Social Myths
Most clusters of communities are heterogeneous in nature. Cultural constructs are deep-rooted and my communities follow such practices arduously and without questioning. One of the common cultural myths surrounding menstruation prohibits girls from entering temples as they are considered impure during that time. What is interesting is the irony of this myth itself, as Hindus worship goddess Kamakhya, a menstruating goddess, and consider her to possess mystic powers to give the boon of childbirth to childless couples.
Some disturbing social constructs include a restriction on girls/ women of talking to the opposite gender during menstruation, a prohibition to touch the pickle in fear that it may rot if a menstruating woman touches it, a prohibition from going to the kitchen or cooking food, not being allowed to wash hair and so on. Menstruation can be a lonely process and these stigmas make it lonelier creating a lack of social support. In most cases, women themselves act as perpetrators of the myth and stigma.
Capitalization of Menstruation Propagating Culture of Disgust
With a significant portion of the world population menstruating every month, they become a target audience for the sale of menstrual hygiene products within the capitalist machinery: sanitary pads, tampons, menstrual cups, etc.
Advertisements and media aid the capitalist agenda by adding to the stigma surrounding this healthy biological function. Most advertisements associate menstruation as a shameful time of the month and spotting and odour of blood to be an unusual thing, something important to conceal and hide. The persuasive powers of advertising reduce the woman to her body and portray her dignity and strength of character to the successful concealment of period.
Language
The language and euphemisms used for period may seem innocent and harmless but are indicative of attitudes towards menstrual health. The need for concealment acts as an instrument to further social myths. Examples of some of the terms used in India are purathakuka (this means “being out” in Malyalam), baajula basane (“sit aside” in Marathi), kavala shivla (implies “crow has touched” in Marathi). While, in a large and culturally diverse country like India, words used for menstruation change every few meters, making verbiage extremely community-centric, the negative connotation remains intact.
Resources and Safety
In order to have a healthy and hygienic period it is of the utmost importance the one have available clean water to wash and private toilets to clean.
Since 2014, after the announcement of the Swachh Bharat Mission in India, more than three crore toilets have been built. But are they being used? Most toilets that have been built under the Swachh Bharat Mission are water-intensive and scarcity of water in many parts of the country renders them unusable.
In many parts of India, women and girls continue to go out to tend to their menstrual needs, collect water, wash, and clean. This venture in search of water and a place to clean oneself and dispose of menstrual waste puts their safety in jeopardy pushing many women to not attend to their menstrual health within the security of their homes.
Gender Equality
It has been observed that women and girls have to face a certain degree of socioeconomic disadvantage, and in certain cases marginalization, due to having to cope with the monetary and social costs of menstruation. Gender equality for a menstruator depends on access to sanitation facilities, awareness shared by both men and women, and a shared ownership from men and women across sectors.
At the present moment, the world finds itself caught in the deluge of the COVID-19 pandemic. India, the second-largest population in the world, went into a 21-day complete lockdown on the 25th of March, 2020, which was later extended to another 19 days to contain the spread of COVID 19 coronavirus.
Webster dictionary defines quarantine as a condition, period, of time, or place in which a person, animal, plant, vehicle, or amount of material suspected of carrying an infectious agent is kept in confinement or isolated in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading. In India, as a cultural and social ritual, many women go through self-quarantine for five days once every month, since time immemorial.
The state of lockdown and quarantine has created an unusual circumstance for all systems and structures upon which the modern world operates, family systems included. Let us take a hypothetical case of Kamakhya and her family unit. Kamakhya is a 14-year-old menstruator, having her period regularly for the past one year. She lives in Bhilwara, in a patriarchal joint family structure, with her older brother (21 years old) , his wife (18 years old) and grandparents. The older brother works in a cloth factory in Bhilwara and controls the economics of the house. His parents along with his two siblings- boy(7 years old), girl(9 years old) work in Surat in a cloth factory. Due to the fear of community spread of the Coronavirus, the cloth factories were shut at the beginning of March in Surat. The parents were left jobless and moved back to Bhilwara with their two children. The older son also found himself jobless as COVID-19 broke loose in Bhilwara a curfew was enforced. Currently, this nine person family unit is in quarantine together in a small house, in forced togetherness.
In quarantine, the family system has very little permeability, especially in terms of essential items needed for survival. Media and fake news, joblessness, economic cycles, food insecurity, and possible health hazards permeate the family system like termites unless recognized, influencing relationships, building fear and instability and pushing the behavioural choices and patterns of the members towards intensifying conflicts. Lack of space and privacy is an added burden.
The family unit that was once in a state of equilibrium, under current circumstances of quarantine finds itself in a state of entropy. This only adds to the existing turmoil of the menstruator.
It is observed that in most families the number of members of the family unit has increased during quarantine, leading to a possibility of change of authority figure within the family system. Generational biases increase during such forced togetherness. Roles may go through adaptation, action strategies may be modified. There also exists the possibility of reviving abandoned menstrual practices that were once prevalent in the household. This is not very conducive to a menstruator.
The act of menstruation needs privacy. With so many people cohabiting a small space, space becomes a privilege. How do women and girls find privacy in their patriarchal homes to tend to their menstrual needs? Can women maintain their previous lifestyle of menstrual hygiene practices when the family resources are limited? Is their menstrual health given that value in the family unit? In areas where women go out of their homes to collect clean water, tend to their menstrual needs or dispose off menstrual waste, how safe are they? Even if a toilet is available at home, is it usable and available to the menstruator?
Due to such uncertainties, stress can build up in the body and significantly effect the ease of a period. This may lead to mood swings, weakness, excessive bleeding, a painful period, a period being delayed, and other issues. The current lockdown makes menstruation a lonelier process, devoid of familiar support structures, magnifying shame or disgust within the patriarchal family structure.
With menstrual hygiene products not initially included in the essential item list released by the Government of India, there were many shopkeepers that did not procure or stock them. Resource deficit in local markets could lead to a price hike. Another possibility is that in some areas these products may not be available and some women may be forced to find alternate means, mostly turning to DIY menstrual products or some unsafe practices.
Call to Action
The following list details a list of proposals essential to having a healthy and dignified period and to mitigating the current situation.
1. First and most important is to identify menstrual hygiene products as essential items by the government machinery, including the distribution of sanitary pads as well as the availability of cotton cloth in the ration shops where essential items are stored and distributed.
2. During the ongoing regular home visits to identify possible cases of COVID 19, the Asha workers (frontline healthcare worker) must also check on the menstrual health of women within the household and inform them of the facility to avail menstrual health products at the ration shops.
3. Healthcare workers must help the male family members understand the added pressure that the female members of the household may be going through (economic challenges, emotional challenges, the bodily challenges of menstruation, etc.).
4. Education is an important pillar of spreading awareness and eradicating stigma. It is extremely important to educate men about menstruation as well as women and girls once this crisis is over.
5. Building a strong community support for women and girls online as well as offline.
6. Encouraging hygienic indigenous practices of menstrual health and promoting their correct and healthy use. For example, the hygienic use of cloth. In India, a large percentage of women use cloth to manage menstrual health. Research shows cotton cloth, if used in a correct way, proves to be a very effective and hygienic way to manage menstrual health. Information on various cloth folds for better absorption of period blood and the importance of drying the cloth in sunlight needs to be shared with girls/women.
7. Recognition of the power of language in creating ideology around menstruation and the need of its evolution in everyday life and within media to eradicate stigma.
8. Functional and women-friendly toilets are a necessity within home premises.
9. Even though there are many online menstrual hygiene campaigns for advocacy (for example, #MenstruationMatters, pamphlets and comics on menstruation and menstrual hygiene, menstrual art), marginalized menstruators are not part of these conversations and dialogues. Emerging technologies, mass media, and social media can play a very important and prominent role here. The question is how can we use technology to reach the marginalized? How can we include them in this conversation? How can we learn from them and share with them?
Conclusion
According to We Forum, more than 800 million women and girls between the ages of 15 to 49 menstruate worldwide on any given day. It thus becomes very important to stop manufacturing stigma around menstruation, conforming to the capitalist agenda of menstrual products, negative connotations associated with the period in everyday language, and social and cultural myths around it. Menstruation is a healthy biological process and needs to be recognized as one. We as menstruators need to stop worrying about our “secret” being out and celebrate one of the most important biological processes of being a healthy woman.