The Road Towards Menstrual Sustainability in India
India has an approximate population of 336 million women menstruators, and only a tiny percentage have access to hygienic menstrual products (There are no indicators available to even begin to gauge the current situation of accessibility of non-women menstruators). This doesn’t come as a surprise, considering that the wealth gap in India is more like a wealth chasm- with the wealthiest 10% of the country holding more than 57% of its wealth and almost 70% of the country’s total population living in rural areas.
Due to this lack of accessibility, menstruators in rural areas often resort to using unhygienic cloth rags as substitutes during their period. Furthermore, entrenched social stigmas that treat menstruation as ‘shameful’ and menstrual blood as ‘dirty and polluted’ further ensnare menstruators into a perpetual cycle of shame and neglect, pushing the most marginalized into horrendous circumstances.
In urban areas, the disposable sanitary pad dominates the menstrual product market. Traditionally, cloth has been used as India’s primary period management product. However, as India began to industrialize, it sought to build and showcase its connections to materials hailed as the pinnacles of modernity- such as plastic. This was especially true for the disposable sanitary pad and created this immense pressure for Indians to accept disposable and plastic menstrual management tools into mainstream society.
The negative impact of this extensive sanitary pad usage is that around 113,000 tonnes of sanitary pads are dumped in landfills every year. There is little to no awareness about how to properly dispose of menstrual waste- neither are there any policies in place to ensure proper disposal of this waste. Furthermore, women are the primary victims of the debilitating environmental effects of this waste. Nearly 50% of urban sanitation workers in India are women from lower caste groups. It is disproportionately women exposed to this menstrual waste and forced to segregate it by hand, thus exposing them to severe diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis B.
Furthermore, most women sanitation workers work in school toilets, where menstrual pads are flushed down toilets due to a lack of dustbins, which clog the drains. Once again, it is the most marginalized women who have to unclog these toilets and expose themselves to health hazards while receiving insufficient pay. Additionally, the fetuses of pregnant sanitation workers are also at risk of exposure to dioxins and other chemicals in menstrual waste, putting them at risk of poor fetal growth and development. There is not an infrastructure to support these women. The concept of paid leave or maternity leave does not exist in these unorganized sectors in India. Most workers cannot afford to take leaves, as they must support their families, meaning many continue to work despite their illness.
In the face of a looming menstrual waste crisis, the next logical step would be the wide distribution and promotion of sustainable menstrual products right? Well, it’s not that simple. The most practical sustainable product would be cloth pads that are safe and easy to use because they are a material Indian menstruators are already familiar with. However, this product also comes with two key issues. First, cloth pads do not stick to underwear like disposable pads do, complicating day-to-day usage. Secondly, there is an accessibility barrier for menstruators in rural areas that do not have access to water to clean their cloth pads in private and are too debilitated by shame to wash them in public spaces.
Other sustainable products, like menstrual cups, prove challenging to integrate into mainstream Indian audiences because of their heavy online presence. Much of rural India lacks access to the internet, so information about new products comes through either oral testimonials of neighbours or TV advertisements. Most testimonials of menstrual cups are available online and are almost always in English- another barrier for a country with more than 19,500 mother tongues wherein not everyone speaks English.
Furthermore, menstrual cups are exorbitantly expensive in India. The price compounded with the learning curve to use the cup deters many Indian menstruators from gravitating toward this option. Particularly with menstrual cups and other such menstrual products that have to be inserted into the vagina, there are fears that they might break the hymen. As virginity is heavily linked to familial honor in India, using a menstrual cup can very well mean endangering a family’s honor and bringing shame to their name in the community.
As a menstrual poverty activist, I’ve learned that you have to meet menstruators where they are at — which often means at their current comfort level and then take small steps towards more sustainable and safer menstrual experiences. Everyone has a unique relationship with menstruation- shaped by their upbringing, lived experiences, and socio-cultural norms. It cannot be expected of someone tearing off pieces of their own saree during their period to happily switch to menstrual cups just because they were offered one for free. Furthermore, one cannot view menstruators as idle sheep that have to be heralded in a particular *better* direction of being- we are all in different places in our unique paths toward repairing our relationship with our menstruating bodies.
On this International Women’s Day, I encourage you to think about how menstrual poverty forces menstruators- particularly women and young girls, into mentally and physically debilitating situations that are almost always unsustainable. I once met a young homeless girl near a sprawling mall (also dubbed the biggest mall in Asia) who was menstruating but didn’t even have the money to buy underwear. Her legs were smeared with dried period blood, so I rushed to get her a packet of pads then belatedly realized that she didn’t even have underwear to use them. After teaching her about pads and where to buy them, she gingerly took the packet from me and muttered, ‘So if I sell this packet, then I can eat rice today?’ No one- least of all a young girl- should have to make such an impossible choice.
Menstrual sustainability cannot be advocated for in isolation from other factors that form a person’s menstrual experiences. If we are to assist menstruating communities in safeguarding their menstrual health, we must address the factors and circumstances that shape the community’s relationship with menstruation. Menstrual sustainability must recognize how poverty intercepts choice and must advocate for eradicating poverty in all forms, particularly when that poverty forces menstruators to choose between a meal or a pad. Currently, there are plenty of barriers delaying a sustainable menstrual revolution in India; however, it is not an impossible task. Sustainable menstrual routines once dominated India, and we must soon find our way back to that in a healthy and empowering way.
