It was an ordinary Sunday evening when we stepped into a general store in our neighbourhood. Except that day, it was a bit more crowded than usual. I left my mother at the counter and walked all the way to a separate section where they keep the junk food (basically all the good stuff). With my hands full, I walked back to the counter where I left my mom, just to find her standing awkwardly by, staring at the rack of deodorants right behind the cashier.
“What happened?” I asked, wanting to know the reason behind her slightly off behaviour.
“I feel extremely awkward asking for sanitary napkins in front of all these people.” She whispered under her breath.
I was slightly taken aback. Mostly, because my mother is a fairly liberal woman and I didn’t expect her to be fazed by such trivial things. So, being the bold, unabashed and slightly shameless girl that I am, I took some cash from her and asked for a packet of sanitary napkins just like that. The shopkeeper got them from an aisle in the extreme end of the store (a place I didn’t even know existed until then) and rolled it in a brown paper bag. All in such hush-hush, as if he was rolling a joint or something.
Anyways, that was that, and the rest was history. I didn’t particularly think much of this incident after that.
Until now.
This morning, I saw a video about a ‘little educated’ man from rural India who’s fighting a crusade against multinational giants in his mission to make sanitary napkins available for every woman in rural and urban India. In his quest for generating employment and making sanitation accessible, not once did he let wealth and fame deter him from achieving his objectives. While concluding one of his TEDex talks, he said, “In my opinion, there are three kinds of educated: little-educated, moderately educated and surplus-educated.” Then he placed his right palm on his chest and said, “This is what a little-educated man can do. What has the surplus educated, done?”
Now on normal days, I would probably just share the video on my Facebook page with some casual hash tag. Instead, this video really prompted me to question our society’s behaviour towards women-related hygiene problems. I’ll tell you what exactly the surplus educated has done; they have branded the very biological process that made their existence a possibility, as “unclean” and “dirty”. The surplus educated have avoided and shunned this topic for as long as they could, so much so that it has become a taboo.
Last year this sparked a lot of debate when Rupi Kaur’s photo was taken down by Instagram because it depicted a menstruating woman. Some lauded her bravery and courage while others only criticized. The biggest problem most people seemed to have with Rupi’s seemingly innocent picture was the fact that it felt gross. People don’t talk about piss, seminal fluids or shit then what’s the point of talking about menstrual blood? A lot of men commented in, saying that if they ever posted a picture of their semen they’d get branded as ‘perverts’ but when a woman does it, it’s for a great cause. But here’s my problem with their claims, there’s no social stigma surrounding other body fluids. People crack poop jokes all the time, I mean if there was blood coming out of any other region of the human body, let’s say a cut on your arm, no one will label you as unclean or dirty or chastise you for it. God forbid that blood comes out of a vagina and everyone will lose their minds.
And of course, a man will be labelled as a pervert for posting pictures of semen, and you want to know why because it’s strictly sexual. Blood is not. There’s a need to talk about periods and not ejaculations because ejaculations don’t hurt. Periods do. Ejaculations don’t last a week but periods do. And a woman’s biological needs need to be tended to or else it can cause serious issues for her; issues that might not mean much to you but are very important for us to talk about openly and discuss.
More recently, a group of students in Islamabad, Pakistan, went around pasting sanitary napkins on a wall to spread awareness about menstrual hygiene. Now what’s more outraging than a couple of students pasting napkins on a wall, was the way the internet reacted to it. Hundreds of people tagged those students as ‘stupid, liberal, elitists’ who’re busy whining about issues that aren’t even there, compared to other problems a country like Pakistan is facing. I agree that there are tonnes of issues in our society that need to be talked about, but menstrual hygiene is one of those issues and one that is very important. Pakistan spends 47 times more on its military than on sanitation. Lack of latrines in schools is a major cause of female drop-outs in rural schools which give rise to gender disparity in education. Our nation’s women need to be just as educated as our men so that they can progress together. One cannot go far without the other.
There are many reasons why sanitation is largely a women’s issue. It is partly due to women’s biology, given that they menstruate for a large part of their lives, and partly as a result of their subordinate position in society, which makes them at a higher risk of rape and violence. Thus, it is apparent that, again and again, we see that the disadvantaged in society are the ones least likely to have access to good hygiene and sanitation, and often that means women.
Since there aren’t any toilets readily available, women are forced to go outside, in the cover of the dark for privacy, and even travel for long distances to maintain dignity. However, there is something extremely worrying about this practice. It exposes women to sexual harassment, rape, and shaming. Therefore, to put a full stop to the spiralling rape culture in our rural areas, the issue must be handled with, from its core.
The lack of sanitary facilities for young girls in school means a greater trend in absenteeism. Proper girl-friendly WASH facilities need to be provided at schools to curb the female drop-out rates in rural areas. Poor sanitation has a domino effect. With the considerable impact of unhygienic sanitation facilities on health, a lack of facilities in the workplace can have an impact on absenteeism, affecting livelihoods, productivity levels and ultimately the economy.
And as women go through different stages of life including pregnancy and old age – not to mention if someone has a temporary or permanent disability – the design and the proximity of the toilet becomes all the more important. One of our challenges is that we don’t always know whether women and girls have access to a toilet, or the soap and water needed to wash their hands, or the means to look after them during menstruation in privacy. Even if a toilet exists in a household, there may be a cultural taboo that blocks one family member, such as a daughter-in-law, from using it.
The female biology has a unique set of needs that need to be catered to or else women at large suffer. The Pakistani society is strictly patriarchal and for that reason, women’s issues aren’t given much importance and are ultimately neglected. Girls themselves remain ignorant about the functions of their anatomy and are forced to remain silent when or if they face any problems. In many cultures including ours, menstruation is a taboo topic that has negative connotations attached to conventional beliefs. There are myths that need to be debunked, but more importantly, women need to be educated more about the different stages of their lives. They need to come up and talk more openly about menstrual hygiene among themselves, so they can remain self-aware and receive the kind of facilitation they feel that needs to be provided to them.
While I was researching for my article, there were loads of comments that I came across by Pakistani men who had to face a lot of problems due to their lack of knowledge about the female biology. One such fellow, (whose name I shall not mention for reasons concerning privacy) said that when his wife was diagnosed with cystic ovaries and his family tried to explain the whole situation to him; he blanked out, mostly because he’d never been educated on such matters.
Women are equal members of the society, and their problems are ultimately our problems. We need to work it out together. As the surplus educated portion of our society, it is our responsibility to make sure a woman never has to feel ashamed of who she is. It is our job to make sanitation accessible to the lesser privileged. And most of all, it is important for us to keep talking dirty.
