Period Poverty: Reinforcing the Gendered Nature of Sanitation

 

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In last week’s blog about World Toilet Day, I emphasised the need to examine the gendered implications of sanitation thus allowing for development. Thus, this week I want to specifically look at period poverty with reference to Kibera, a shanty town in Kenya.  Period poverty is the combination of multiple practical and psychosocial deprivations which are experienced by mensuration women in resource poor settings (Crichton et al 2013). Due to this, lives and wellbeing’s of women are being affected (Action aid n/d). In this blog I will elaborate on the dimensions which perpetuate period poverty, and how greater research is needed in reference to this. 

Factors perpetuating period poverty

The impact of insufficient WASH on females has been continuously highlighted throughout my blog, and of course this is the one of many factors perpetuating period poverty: Within Nairobi, less than ¼ of primary schools meet the minimum required latrines per pupil (Corburn and Hildebrand 2015). The severe lack of products and facilities to manage periods can push girls to temporarily or even permanently leave school (Tull 2019). It is estimated that in Kenya, girls miss a total of 3.5 million of learning days because of inadequate sanitation and toilet facilities (Corburn and Hildebrand 2015), and not being in school potentially poses them greater risk of child marriage (Action aid n/d). Due to the limited access to toilets girls develop coping strategies such as eating or drinking less (Tull 2019) thus reducing the need to go toilet. In other cases, when toilets are made, they aren’t made taking women into account and thus don’t have apparatus which allows for the safe disposal of sanitary products (Crichton et al 2013). This links back to last week’s blog and reinforces the value of the toilet in mobilising action surrounding WASH (and gender)! Moreover, is the issue of the lack of access to sanitary products. As a result of this, women depend on other sorts of unsafe material in order to manage their periods. For example, in certain rural areas in Zambia, girls use a sort of pad which uses cow dung as the absorbent material, and at times, sat on piles of sand during their period because they have no other options (End Water Poverty n/d). In Kenya, the scarcity of sanitary products resulted in women being forced to have sex in exchange for them (Tull 2019). Sexual exploitation highlights the issue of the lack of dignity, with over 30% of women in Kibera, being sexually assaulted, whilst trying to access public toilet facilities (Corburn and Hildebrand 2015). The lack of dignity is further elicited by the lack of privacy: In Kibera, schools with sanitation facilities do not have adequate lockable doors, and many families live in one room homes, which makes it difficult for girls to bathe, and clean and change their pads (Crichton et al 2013). One of the big underlying issues perpetuating period poverty is the stigma and lack of education regarding menstruation. Period taboos are deep rooted in gender dynamics and thus embedded within gender norms- even ideas such as not being able to sleep in the house and excluded from religious and social activities since they are considered impure (End water poverty n/d). With reference to the research study in Kibera, girls did not understand what was happening when they started their periods. This was worsened by the fact that they had limited parental support at home, and rarely discussed the topic of periods with mothers saying that they found it uncomfortable to talk about. In fact, in  schools’, girls were considered to be misbehaving if they accidently leaked (Crichton et al 2013). This can have a severe psychological and emotional impact on girls, with this impending anxiety and fear of being stigmatised, and the fact that they must be further isolated from others in order to avoid this embarrassment from being on their period (Crichton et al 2013).

Conclusion

From everything discussed above, there is no doubt that women need more resources to address their menstrual management (Pouramin et al 2020) and the availability of water is central in this regard. However, ultimately the underlying issue comes down to the lack of education and stigma surrounding periods, which needs to be addressed, and this links back to the underlying need to research all aspects of the intersection between gender and water to promote female empowerment and development. Unfortunately, period poverty has not been heavily focussed on in international discourse. Whilst there have been some attempt of addressing these issues with Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM), but there is a global shortage of information and initiatives surrounding this too (Tull 2019), with MHM is not clearly included as a factor within the SDGs (Pouramin et al 2020). Thus, in my next blog post I will look at attempts of MHM which have taken place.