Cloth pads and More
Once in a while, Jennifer Rees heads to a fabric shop in Torrance, California, to buy materials for her sewing production. She sews for girls, a lot of girls, all over the world. Rees is a sewing specialist for Days for Girls, a non-profit organization that sends reusable menstrual pad kits to over 200 countries.
Rees has at least five big bags of fabric of different patterns and colors in the back seat of her car – dotted, flowery, star-shaped and more.
The cloth pads sewn by mostly volunteers are sent to different parts of the world, including Uganda, Bangladesh and Kenya. Rees said the aim of Days for Girls is to provide the necessary menstrual products girls in these developing nations need to keep them in schools.
“It just seems like a basic human right to have access to [menstrual products] so that you are not pent in or unable to do whatever you want to do,” Rees said.
Other organizations are carrying out similar projects as well, such as Lunapads, Too Little Children and Dignity Periods. Experts said these acts are certainly one way to help women in developing countries, but those women need something more than just pads.
Rees said girls in developing countries skip class because they don’t have a proper product to absorb their flow. They eventually drop out of school completely because they couldn’t catch up. UNICEF said 20 percent of girls in less developed countries drop out of school due to menstruation every year.
Getting menstrual pads or tampons is easy in the United States, but it’s not the case in many other parts of the world. In India, a pack of 10 pads cost around 30 to 40 Indian rupees, equivalent to around 60 cents.
It doesn’t seem expensive when comparing it with a pack of pads that worth $7 in the US. But it is already an unaffordable cost for many Indian women. The average person in India earns around $500 a month, compare with $4,700 in the U.S.
“What do women in developing countries actually need?”
“Often that question doesn’t get asked. The answer gets assumed.”
That’s the response of Chris Bobel, president of Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, when she was asked about the actual need of menstruating women in developing countries.
Bobel said the typical assumption is that girls lack menstrual products and thus organizations are providing them all the resources they need for their periods.
“I think that’s a gross generalization that is rooted in our western lifestyle, which is we all use products, and we assume everyone else must use them as well,” she said.
Studies show that women in developing countries, where disposable products are not so accessible, often use cloth, rags or pieces of bed mattresses to absorb their menstrual flow. Bobel pointed out these are women’s common choices of material because they are free.
Bobel said these women have their own means to handle their period and what they need most are fundamental resources, such as water and soap to wash the rags they use to absorb their flow.
“Or they might need cultural support to hang the pads on the clothes line so they dry in the sun completely before they use them again,” Bobel said. “Maybe they need the boys in their class to stop bullying them about their periods.”
Researches found that girls in different countries experience fear, shame and confusion when they menstruate. It’s because of the lack of information and social support, on top of long history of social and cultural taboos regarding menstruation.
Rees said women in developing countries, especially rural villages, don’t talk about menstruation openly because it’s tabooed and regarded as unhygienic. She said women are ashamed to hang their cloth pads in public to dry them after wash because others would recognize from the shape that those are their menstrual pads.
Keeping the washed pads under the beds or in dark is how women hide their rags, Rees said. Most of the time the rags are not completely dried before the women re-use them and this increases the chance of infection.
Katie Hasson, a gender studies professor at University of Southern California, said the another issue to deal with is the availability of infrastructure and fundamental resources.
“If you have trouble getting clean water in the first place, let alone the access to a particular kind of menstrual products,” she said.
Hasson said society has to take a broader view of looking at water and sanitation in general. Giving out cloth pads is not the ultimate solution, she said. “If there is no washroom at school or private place for [girls] to change their pads or tampon, then you aren’t actually getting the root of the problem.”
Rees said Days for Girls also realizes the importance of providing menstrual health education to the girls in developing countries, so they are providing trainings as well. Volunteers teach girls from reasons they menstruate to how to handle your flow and to care for the reusable pad kit they receive.
Bobel said the most important part, not only for developing countries but for all nations, is to challenge the menstrual stigma. She said for years women are told that menstruation is a disability and meant to be hidden.
Being able to talk about menstruation openly without shame is the first step, Bobel said. “And to prioritize menstrual health education, for boys and girls and the people around them.” She said what she called the 360 approach – education for everyone – is needed to slowly erase the social misunderstanding and stigmatization of menstruation.