Period poverty and Covid-19

With the prevalence of Covid-19, it becomes the state’s responsibility to provide sanitation facilities

While the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the health, wealth and well-being of people all around the world, it has significantly and disproportionately impacted women and girls when it comes to their reproductive health. Extending its reach well beyond health and having a trickledown effect on everything from poverty to economic downfall to climate change, the global pandemic is affecting everyone, but not in the same way. With the rise in cases and individuals being required to act more responsibly in keeping clean and maintaining hygiene, women and girls in many parts of the world are trying harder to cope and survive in these unprecedented circumstances are they strive every day to control and fight back against issues such as period poverty.

Period poverty, which is defined as the lack of access to sanitary products, toilets, hand-washing facilities, menstrual hygiene education and awareness, and sanitation and waste management, has made it severely difficult for women and girls to manage their periods safely and with dignity. However, with Covid-19’s major blow to the economy, the ever-increasing financial burden on governments all around the world has led to the further worsening of the problem of period poverty.

Menstruation, which is an essential and natural process for a woman or a girl to maintain good reproductive health, has long been considered a stigma with a social taboo attached to it; where girls are often forced to either not mention it in public or avoid bringing it up before their male relatives and family members. Also indicated as unclean and embarrassing, periods are a vital process that nature allows a female to go through in order to keep her reproductive cycle in check and even reduce pregnancy complications later in life if she chooses to have children.

However, what is needed during this pandemic more than ever is a chance for girls to be able to speak openly about periods, rather than be embarrassed of a natural biological process their body goes through every month; also sometimes known by its so-called clean version as ‘that time of the month’. The idea that periods, menstruation, or the cramps that follow through or start as a result of the Pre-Menstrual Syndrome symptoms, are a hush-hush subject altogether, is antithetical to the very objective of advocating against and eradicating period poverty. In late 2019, a period-themed emoji was introduced which is a red droplet of blood.

While this may be a step forward in including in the emoji library the very taboo subject that menstruation has always been, and allowing people to exchange information on social media by using the emoji ascribed to the phenomenon, it still does not overcome the problem of why talking about periods has yet to become a common and communicative subject. The fact that so many girls around the world avoid bringing up periods in front of their fathers or brothers has also subsequently affected their freedom to ask for sanitary products that may help them have a comfortable menstrual flow and promising hygiene. However, difficulty in making their male family members come to terms with and become accepting towards periods is a result of the deep-rooted embarrassment that stems from the concept of women going through a process too impure and shameful to discuss. Girls also sometimes miss out on school, in order to avoid situations that that may occur due to a prevalent lack of sanitary pads and products that guarantee hygiene as well as safe waste management.

When women face difficulty in managing their access to clean water, sanitation, education and other basic fundamental guarantees, they are most likely to be deprived of their human rights that govern and include the same. Even though largely affected by the stigma, social exclusion and harassment as a result of their natural biological clock, the struggle to attain a safe and dignified way to manage their periods is not restricted to girls, but extends to and encompasses within it transgender men and non-binary persons who menstruate often and face discrimination at the hands of those who have considered periods a ‘dirty’ and ‘unclean’ call of nature.

It is not just the lack of knowledge and awareness that gives rise to unending problems for people menstruating, but also the lack of understanding and acceptability from the community in general to openly converse and communicate about menstruation without passing stigmatic judgments. When it is normalised for adolescent girls to speak up about the discomfort they face, it will become equally normal for others to listen to the former’s needs and provide them with the basic services that people in economic depravity and from a conservative socio-cultural background can only hope for.

However, with the prevalence of Covid-19 and an increasing demand for hand washing facilities, sanitation, sanitary products and proper waste disposal systems, it becomes the state’s primary responsibility to provide special water and sanitation facilities for each neighbourhood; especially rural towns and villages. In poverty-stricken areas, where a lack and underdevelopment of Menstrual Hygiene Health (MHM) is an ever-lasting issue, women and girls are left with no choice but to use alternatives to safe sanitary pads such as unclean or used pieces of cloth.

Hence, it becomes our responsibility to begin bringing change through the dissemination of key information in close-knit rural settings that can help create and bring awareness in local communities most affected by period poverty, as they try to achieve better menstrual hygiene as well as fight Covid-19. Information regarding the proper use of sanitary products and sanitation, the procedure of maintaining hygiene, the manner of washing hands and how frequently, and the understanding of waste disposal need to be highlighted for more people to become familiar with how poverty can strike natural and biological processes which govern health and safety. After all, knowing about period poverty and helping safe and dignified menstruation should not only be a girl or a woman’s business, but every other person’s concern as well.