Six Ways USAID is Committing to Menstrual Health and Hygiene
Our commitment — from the classroom to the factory floor — is to ensure all menstruators can safely engage in life with dignity and confidence
This year’s Menstrual Hygiene Day theme is #WeAreCommitted, shifting from calling for action to leading by example. And this week, USAID is launching our Agency-wide approach to menstrual health and hygiene.
Approximately 500 million people worldwide face barriers to managing their menstruation in a safe, healthy, and dignified manner due to poor access to menstrual health and hygiene resources, and stigma around menstruation, among other factors. The challenges are most acute in low- and middle-income countries.
That’s why we, as Agency leaders working in and across multiple sectors, are committed to promoting menstrual equity for all.
To us, this means supporting people so they can experience menstruation with dignity, safety, and confidence, and manage their menstrual health soundly whenever needed and wherever they are.
Our approach to menstrual health and hygiene is one where USAID and our partners address the interlocking barriers that menstruation can create in a person’s life. This requires integrating perspectives from global health; water security, sanitation, and hygiene; women’s empowerment; and education.
Here are six ways USAID is committed to menstrual health and hygiene.
1. Providing Access to Basic Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Resources at Homes, Schools, Health Care Facilities and Workplaces
As of 2020, four billion people worldwide live in homes without access to a hygienic toilet and three billion do not have water and soap at home. Women report lower job satisfaction and inability to focus in workplaces that have insufficient or inaccessible toilets. Nearly 700 million students attend schools without sanitation facilities.
Lack of access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) resources, coupled with insufficient access to menstrual hygiene products and a lack of social support, can lead to menstruators missing up to 20% of school days and potentially dropping out.
In Haiti, USAID provided 1,500 students with access to clean water and improved sanitation through the WASH in Schools component of USAID’s Community Driven Development project. The project provided modern and private toilets to reduce the amount of time girls had to wait to use the restroom during recreation periods, added a ramp so students with disabilities could access the facilities, and added private changing rooms to meet menstrual and other hygiene needs.
USAID also partnered with a local community in Guatemala to identify and prioritize development goals that included access to safe, clean water in households. With USAID support, community members installed a new water system for the community that provides water to households, as well as the school, church, and cemetery.
2. Offering Reproductive Health Information and Services
Research shows that including menstrual health in comprehensive sexual education can help menstruators manage their reproductive health, including planning and preventing pregnancies, from puberty to menopause.
Across six Francophone West and Central African countries, USAID is supporting a youth-led multimedia campaign to help improve sexual and reproductive health knowledge and behaviors among adolescents. Videos on menstruation attracted the most engagement, demonstrating the interest and need for this information. Menstrual health messages helped improve young people’s understanding of how menstrual health and hygiene fit into broader reproductive health outcomes.
3. Providing Menstrual Products in Communities and Workplaces
Inadequate access to menstrual health resources in the workplace may lead to absenteeism, poor job performance, reduced earnings, and job dissatisfaction. Recognizing the need for better access, USAID partnered with local factories to support working menstruators in Nepal and Kenya with improved access to period products including disposable and reusable pads, and reusable menstrual cups.
Beyond the workplace, USAID has provided menstrual products in a variety of locations. For example, in Burkina Faso, USAID is supporting a woman-owned small business that dispels menstruation stigma and myths, and sells hygienic, reusable menstrual cloths. Since the company received seed funding in early 2019, it has sold 10,000 hygiene kits. In Nigeria, USAID also partnered with Kimberly Clark to distribute 40,000 Kotex sanitary pads to young women.
4. Considering Waste Management
Without a way to dispose of menstrual products, people cannot manage their periods — period.
In Kenya and Nepal, USAID supported working menstruators to manage menstruation cycles with dignity by installing trash cans in toilets located inside local factories and updating plans for emptying them regularly.
In Nepal, USAID provided pads from Nepali companies made of locally sourced, medical-grade cotton fabric that can be used again and again with proper care. This option was popular during the COVID-19 pandemic because people didn’t need to leave the house to purchase supplies.
5. Driving Social and Behavior Change
Social and behavior change activities that address stigma, shift social norms, and increase affordability and access to products or latrines can improve gender equality and menstruation experiences.
In Malawi, menstruation taboos hold women back from fully participating in agriculture. USAID and the Coca-Cola Company and Foundation teamed up to engage women and men in conversations about menstrual hygiene management through farmer field schools. As a result of these conversations, male community members committed to listening to women speak about their concerns and preferences about managing their menstrual cycles to increase women’s participation in the community.
6. Improving Governance, Finance, and Research
Discriminatory systems, laws, and policies often institutionalize harmful menstruation-related norms and stigma. USAID supports implementation of the national menstrual health and hygiene policy and strategy in Kenya.
USAID is a member of Kenya’s national hygiene promotion Technical Working Group, which coordinates implementation of the national menstrual health and hygiene agenda. We supported research on specific marginalized populations of menstruators, such as factory workers, to strengthen the institutional framework and technical protocols, including the development of a country-wide strategy on menstrual hygiene management in Kenya.
Similarly, in Nigeria USAID provided technical support to the National Technical Working Group on Menstrual Health and Hygiene Management to develop a national action plan for menstrual health and hygiene.
Where do we go now?
The Agency is approaching menstrual health and hygiene as an opportunity to improve gender equity worldwide. To learn more, explore our new technical brief on Menstrual Health and Hygiene. We hope it will be useful and inspiring to a new wave of leaders committed to achieving menstrual equity for all.
About the Authors
Marietou Satin is the Acting Office Director for the Office of Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition, and Ellen Starbird is the Office Director for the Office of Population and Reproductive Health, both within the USAID Bureau for Global Health. Diana Prieto is the Office Director for the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub, part of the USAID Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation. And Jeff Goldberg is the Director for the Center for Water Security, Sanitation and Hygiene in the USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security.
