Its High Time That We Normalise Periods
Story of a young girl who experienced periods for the first time. Why menstrual hygiene is crucial.
Shreeja, a 13 year old residing in a small village of Madhya Pradesh, ran to her mom after finding a red stain on her clothes. Soon after, she was made to drop out of her school and was instructed to sit separately, aloof from her family members while she was menstruating.
This, sadly, is the reality of 23 million Indian women who drop out of school every year once they start menstruating. Their dreams are shattered in the blink of an eye. And what for? A normal biological process. Diving deep into the roots of this, we come to know this is mainly because of the lack of menstrual hygiene facilities available in the small towns/villages of India.
Often, menstrual hygiene is looked as a luxury rather than a necessity. The government sell sanitary napkins at a cost which a low wage earning family can only imagine spending of in their dreams. Even the locally produced sanitary napkins are not accessible for this group. On top of everything, the patriarchy gifted us several superstitions to live by. This includes, eating separately, prohibition of entry at holy places and the kitchen in the houses and even sleeping outside the house at night. All of this is endured by an average Indian woman while she’s menstruating. A girl growing up with such mental brutality thrown on her face only ends up in a pit of anxiety.
It’s high time we normalise periods and understand that it is a completely natural biological process. The least that we could do is provide our housemaids with a few sanitary napkins that she can use. This would prevent the infections caused by rags and old clothes. Spreading the word to break the taboo around periods is as important as the patriarchal ego we were trying to satisfy since ages
