Dispatches: Menstruation a Human Rights Issue? Absolutely

[undeterred]

MAY 27, 2014 Amanda Klasing AND Kriti Sharma

Menstruation isn’t something that necessarily leaps to mind when one thinks of human rights. But May 28, 2014, the first-ever global Menstrual Hygiene Day, is designed to change that – it is a day established by a coalition of nongovernmental organizations to break the taboo around talking about periods. Doing so is an important step in advancing the rights of women and girls.

Around the world, lack of access to clean sanitation facilities and menstrual supplies is fundamental to living a life of dignity, and to realizing many human rights, such as the rights to education, work, and health. Lack of safe and clean sanitation facilities at schools can lead to low attendance and high dropout rates for girls. Girls who can’t afford sanitary napkins or change them privately may miss school during their periods. Some women miss work days when menstruating because their work places lack clean sanitation facilities. It’s absurd that a natural bodily function like menstruation poses such an obstacle to education and employment for women and girls in much of the world.

Menstrual hygiene management also plays an important role in supporting the rights of women and girls with disabilities. Parents and guardians without adequate facilities or support to assist a woman or girl with a disability to manage her menstruation may seek more drastic measures—namely, forced sterilization to end menstruation altogether. It is not a decision parents take lightly. But often the decision has little to do with the woman or girl’s well-being and is instead geared toward reducing the burden on caregivers. The sterilization can be carried out when a girl is as young as 10, and is often done without her informed consent.

Schools, workplaces, and governments need to face some basic facts. All women and adolescent girls need clean, safe toilets. They need menstrual supplies. They need to be able to talk about their periods without shame. Menstruation management matters for women’s and girls’ human rights.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/27/dispatches-menstruation-human-rights-issue-absolutely

[theHandpuppet]

1. Interesting topic

One to which I have admittedly given little thought. There is such a stigma attached to menstruation that even most women don't talk about it. The reasons can be cultural or religious; in the case of countries where the Abrahamic religions predominate, the Old Testament refers to menstruation as something so unclean as to be unholy. Below are just a few examples:

Leviticus 15:19-30
“When a woman has a discharge, and the discharge in her body is blood, she shall be in her menstrual impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening. And everything on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean. Everything also on which she sits shall be unclean. And whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening. And whoever touches anything on which she sits shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening. Whether it is the bed or anything on which she sits, when he touches it he shall be unclean until the evening.

Ezekiel 36:17
“Son of man, when the house of Israel lived in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds. Their ways before me were like the uncleanness of a woman in her menstrual impurity.

Leviticus 20:18
And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people.

Leviticus 15:28-30
But if she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count for herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. And on the eighth day she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons and bring them to the priest, to the entrance of the tent of meeting. And the priest shall use one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. And the priest shall make atonement for her before the Lord for her unclean discharge.

So in order to foster a dialogue about menstrual hygiene we first have to hurdle the religious taboos regarding women as sexual beings and menstruation in particular. How in the world we can accomplish that in such a puritanical society?

[undeterred]

2. Imagine what the cost of tampons and sanitary napkins means for

girls living in poverty. It means they use rags instead, and stay out of sight for 4-5 days. And missing 4-5 days of school or work each month puts girls and women at a huge disadvantage. Seems like such a simple thing - but if there is no practical solution its a big problem.

I've read about this happening in developing countries, but honestly, with the cost of "feminine protection" in this country I'll bet its a problem for some American girls and women too.

[theHandpuppet]

3. I think it would help if more food banks distributed hygiene kits

I know that would be a lot to ask of them, but there must be some way to buy prepaid, preassembled kits that simply need distribution points.