It's Only Blood_Shattering the Taboo of Menstruation

by Anna Dahlqvist

  ‘They stand here in line when the library opens in the morning,’ Wanjiru Kepha says, and introduces me to an enthusiastic librarian who tells me that they can have up to 700 visitors per day.

  They are children and young people from Mukuru. It is a school holiday right now, but they still cover every bench and table out in the garden with their textbooks. Here, they can find the silence and space that so many of them do not have at home. There are clean toilets and running water. The area is an oasis, a place that the mud which currently covers the rest of the ground in Mukuru does not reach.

  Here, Huru International also has two small factories where they produce cloth pads and underwear, and put together the ‘menstrual packs’ which they hand out in schools.

  ‘Disposable pads cause big problems in areas like Mukuru where there is no system for waste disposal,’ Wanjiru Kepha says.

  In the first factory, nine people work according to an ‘assembly-line principle’. The factory consists of one single room with one worktable and sewing machine for each of them. They cut fabric, sew together the various layers, and attach wings and buttons so that the pads can be secured. Together, they produce 3,000 pads in a day. The salary corresponds to 9 US dollars per eight-hour working day, almost twice the minimum wage.

  The menstrual packs contain eight purple pads in various sizes, three panties in as many colours, soap, brochures with information about menstruation, and a plastic bag for used menstrual protection. All of it is placed inside a blue drawstring bag with a butterfly and the text ‘Huru’ on the back. Wanjiru Kepha shows me while explaining how sought-after the soaps are.

  ‘We try to talk to parents about how important it is that their children get to keep the soap for the pads.’

  The factory where the panties are made is located a few houses down. Here, too, fabric is cut and sewn together, and pieces of elastic and labels are added. Most of the employees are women, they all come from Mukuru, and several of them use their salaries to fund studies at universities and other schools.

  * * *

  The rain has ceased. Catherine, Lilian, and Jane, who have been working at the underwear factory for several years, are taking a short break to speak with me. They wear light-blue coats from Huru over their own clothes. At 46, Jane is the oldest. The other two are in their mid-twenties.

  ‘Before, I used toilet paper as menstrual protection. I used up an entire roll in a day and it was very complicated. Now I feel freer,’ Catherine says.

  And it is cheaper to use cloth pads than toilet paper in the long run, Lilian notes, even for someone who does not receive menstrual protection as an employee benefit. All of them are satisfied – but of course also loyal – users of Huru’s pads.

  Jane laughs when she explains that she eventually did not have any more old clothes from which to cut fabric for menstrual protection. Growing serious again, she says that it has become easier to travel and to just be outside with the cloth pads. Because they can be attached with buttons, she no longer has to think about the possibility that the pads could fall out.

  ‘But it’s difficult to get them dry when it’s cold and rains as much as it does right now. It means that we have to hang them up indoors and it takes a couple of days before they’re completely dry,’ Catherine says.

  Huru International is a rather typical example of the many menstruation organisations that, in a kind of interplay with the global menstrual awakening, have been established over the last few years in Kenya, Uganda, India, and several other countries. They make their own menstrual protection to keep the costs down, but also with the ambition of creating opportunities for women to earn a living. They distribute the menstrual protection in schools and offer workshops.

  ‘The government says that one million students lack access to menstrual protection. We reach perhaps 70,000 students, and the government close to 300,000, and then other organisations add to that. But it’s not nearly enough,’ Wanjiru Kepha says.

  Since 2011, Kenya has had a budget for the distribution of menstrual protection of about 2.8 million US dollars per year. There is a shortage, not only in the sense that too few are reached, but also because the government hands out disposable pads that only last a few months. Often, they are also shared with others in the family, sisters and mothers who are not in school.

  ‘We know that some girls trade sex for money to be able to buy pads. Both because the teachers tell us and because it has been brought to attention by the government.’

  Wanjiru Kepha and her organisation belong to the group that thinks giving out disposable pads is problematic. Partly because it is more expensive in the long run, but also because it generates garbage mountains that are the last thing slums like Mukuru need. Or, they end up in the latrines that fill up too quickly. Burning the pads, which contain a variety of plastics, is a hazard both to one’s personal health and to the environment.

  So why is the government not handing out cloth pads? One of the explanations offered is that there is no national standard for cloth pads in Kenya – a requisite quality check. It is something that Huru fights for, together with other organisations like WASH United.

  ‘It’s the commercial interests that get in the way. The companies exert pressure on those in charge,’ says Valentine Samoei, who has kept her bright yellow shoes on and notes without hesitation that corruption is the real explanation for why the government prefers disposable pads.

  * * *

  Cloth pads or disposable pads? That is the choice faced by the majority of menstruation organisations that are part of the global fight against poverty and struggle for rights. The tampon is rarely part of the picture and the menstrual cup is still an ‘outsider’ – but with good potential, it turns out.

  When it comes to individuals, many agree that free choice is what is most important. On a structural level, there is a criticism – represented by Huru International, among others – against the long-term unsustainability of disposable products. This criticism is also raised by an international environmental movement with feminist overtones, which tries to promote menstrual cups and cloth pads on a wider front in both low- and high-income countries.

  The menstrual product industry is primarily dominated by the American companies Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, and Johnson & Johnson. In 2017, the total sale of menstrual products across the world is expected to reach levels equivalent to around 15 billion US dollars per year, with the largest expansion in Asia. The environmental impact of manufacturing will increase accordingly, as will the amount of waste. Imagine six items of menstrual protection per day, for approximately four days every month, from puberty to menopause with breaks for potential pregnancies. Calculations usually arrive at around 10,000 tampons and pads per person.

  What will happen if India’s more than 350 million menstruators switch to disposable products? Lakshmi Murthy, who has designed cloth pads and taken an active part in the issue of menstruation in India for many years, answers with a gesture: a big mountain in the air. The garbage mountain.

  Now, she researches menstrual protection and is a dedicated advocate of recyclable alternatives. That is why the second half of the garbage mountain gesture comes as a surprise. The apparent irritation.

  ‘Only 6 per cent of the waste here in India is hygiene products and that includes diapers, wipes, and a load of other things. Still, focus falls on menstrual protection. Why should it be so central? I think that women too often become targets in this discussion, when we should instead be making demands on those who produce and sell products that cannot be recycled.’

  When an analysis of gender-power relations is added to the environmental aspect, Archana Patkar is also faced with a dilemma. She is Head of Policy at the UN-affiliated WASH organisation WSSCC (Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council). It was Archana Patkar who launched the concept ‘Menstrual Hygiene Management’ in a UN context in 2005. Since then, she has been pursuing the issue with great fervour and prominent authority.

  ‘Firs
t, women’s experiences of menstruation have been denied and stigmatised. There has been a complete silence from the UN. And now we’re supposed to tell them that they have to think about the environment and the Sustainable Development Goals.’

  At the same time, it is a given task for her as a representative for one of the UN’s organisations.

  ‘We certainly have to have a sustainability perspective now that more and more women will have access to disposable products. At the same time … Why do women always have to take responsibility for everything? For the environment, the children, the families – everything!’

  ZanaAfrica is one of the organisations that have chosen to go in for disposable pads and has therefore had to put up with repeatedly being called into question. Like Huru International in Kenya and Irise International in Uganda, they have their own production with focus on social responsibility and without the pursuit of profit maximisation. Catherine Onyango describes their choice of menstrual protection as simply taking the girls’ side.

  ‘When we ask around in schools, disposable pads are what most of them want. They don’t know how they’re supposed to wash the cloth pads in private or where to dry and store them.’

  The criticism takes aim not only at the environmental aspect, but also at the irresponsibility of creating new consumers with temporary, free products. The products create a need that becomes difficult to satisfy later and risks leading to even more cases of ‘sex in exchange for menstrual protection’.

  Several of those who were pioneers in the fight for everyone’s right to manage their period with comfort and dignity are now concerned that this fight is increasingly being taken over by commercial interests. Archana Patkar is one of them. So is Lakshmi Murthy. The menstrual products, which are supposed to be part of something bigger, become the only answer. The social movement is hijacked and those who menstruate are reduced to potential customers. The messages about hiding the menstrual blood, keeping fresh, and smelling nice continue to be reproduced, contrary to the goal of breaking the ideology of shame and dirt.

  ‘The companies convey that you’re a loser if you don’t use their products. Their message about cleanliness and silence also gives them control over our bodies,’ Lakshmi Murthy says.

  The American researcher Chris Bobel, who has written about menstrual activism in the book New Blood: Third-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation (2010), has commented on the role of menstrual products in the global fight for rights. In an interview with Newsweek, she says that ‘it’s a material solution that funders love, and it’s concrete and scalable’. She continues: ‘What’s not getting challenged is the actual culture of menstrual secrecy and shame.’

  The menstruation organisations are well aware that menstrual products are not a solution. ‘Menstrual products are just a way in,’ as Catherine Onyango at ZanaAfrica said. At the same time, they risk falling short when the big companies turn to governments, municipalities, schools, and other institutions with their free pads.

  * * *

  In light of the technical innovations we have seen in different areas during the last one hundred years, the history of menstrual products is a sad one. And predominantly American. In general, products have been launched on the US market, and later brought over to Europe where there has been money to make.

  The pad arrived around the turn of the century but did not become a success until the 1920s, at that point with a belt to keep it in place. In the 1930s, the tampon makes its first appearance. Around 40 years later, the pad is developed and gets wings as well as an adhesive. During the 1990s it becomes thinner. The menstrual cup, which existed in an outmoded version as early as by the end of the nineteenth century, is upgraded and gets an – albeit limited – breakthrough during the 2000s. Existing alternatives are continuously improved and changed, but there are still remarkably few considering the great demand.

  Menstrual products are rarely seen as the necessity they are. Instead, they fall within a more luxurious category, with high costs for menstruators as a consequence.

  In Sweden, the estimated cost of menstruating is between 4,500 and 9,000 US dollars during a lifetime, based on the price of disposable products. Demands to scrap the value-added tax, currently set at around 25 per cent, have been dismissed with reference to EU regulations. But since March 2016, this is no longer a valid argument. That is when the EU decided to let go of the VAT regulations for personal hygiene products such as menstrual protection, partly after protests in the UK, where activists had been running a successful campaign against the VAT on menstruation. The question is whether it could have been seen as a valid argument even before that. The UK has already managed to lower the VAT to 5 per cent and has promised to remove it. Conservative politician and former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne says that the anger at the ‘tampon tax’ has been heard ‘loud and clear’. Who will follow remains to be seen. Today, the menstrual VAT is set at between 17 and 25 per cent in EU countries – except in Ireland, which was allowed to keep its VAT-exempt menstrual products when entering the EU.

  In all other instances, VAT-exempt menstrual products are a rarity, save for a few examples. In Kenya, they became a reality in 2004 when the government also removed the import duty on menstrual protection. Nor is VAT added to menstrual products in Tanzania, Nigeria, Lebanon, Nicaragua, or Jamaica. Canada took the step in 2015, after years of protests against what was described as putting ‘an unfair tax burden on people with a particular biological characteristic’.

  In January 2016, the then United States President Barack Obama was faced with the question of why menstrual protection is taxed as luxury goods in an interview with the YouTuber Ingrid Nilsen. He answered in astonishment that: ‘I have no idea why states would tax these as luxury items. I suspect it’s because men were making the laws when those taxes were passed.’ He later confessed his ignorance about the fact that 40 American states tax menstrual protection as luxury goods, in contrast with products that are considered ‘necessary’, like food, medicine, and in some states even clothes.

  The argument is simple: menstrual protection is not a luxury but a necessity, like food and medicine. The VAT on menstrual protection is gender discriminatory and becomes a kind of financial penalty for those who menstruate – regardless of whether they want to or not.

  But it is not just a matter of principle about rights and non-discrimination, as not everyone can afford the high prices for menstrual protection. In the US, for example, it is not possible to buy menstrual products with the food stamps that 45 million Americans depend on. In shelters for the homeless, menstrual protection is often at the top of the list of unfulfilled needs. In the magazine Vice, 21-year-old Zoe talks about her time living on the streets of London: ‘There was nowhere to find that stuff and I was obviously too embarrassed to ask strangers for it.’ The initiative ‘The Homeless Period’ tries to convince British politicians to give shelters a special grant for menstrual protection, like they already do for condoms.

  For many, the fight against the VAT is just a step towards the real goal: government subsidies to make menstrual protection free. In Sweden in 2004, the then parliamentarian and member of the Left Party Gudrun Schyman submitted a motion about free menstrual protection with the reasoning that it is an unavoidable expense which, moreover, affects a group with a lower income level. Contributions to the debate are repeated year after year, with suggestions that it should be possible to deduct the cost of menstrual protection on your tax return and that schools should hand them out for free.

  In the latter case, New York may now serve as a model. In April 2016, 25 schools in the most socioeconomically vulnerable areas in the Bronx and Queens installed vending machines with free menstrual protection in the school toilets. Just the beginning, according to the local politicians who made it happen.

  There are glimmers of light in the sad history of menstrual protection. Progress is also being made within product development, though it is terribly slow. In addition to mor
e kinds of menstrual cups, a couple of companies in the US have (once again) launched special menstrual underwear, both panties and underpants, that serves as menstrual protection in itself. These are washed and reused. At the same time, more and more eco-labelled disposable products appear on the market.

  But for many of the menstruation organisations operating in Africa and Asia, the biodegradable disposable pads are more interesting. These are produced in the UK using organic cotton, but are also manufactured on a smaller scale in India. Students at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, have produced pads made of degradable plastic and water hyacinths – a plant that also happens to pose a threat to waters and wetlands, including East African Lake Victoria.

  * * *

  The coffee shop franchise Artcaffe is an obligatory feature in most shopping centres in Nairobi. Here, the price of a pizza is 9 US dollars and a slice of apple pie 4.50. The slum in Mukuru is 15 kilometres away from the area Upper Hill Estate and the shopping centre Yaya, where Artcaffe is located on the ground floor. In Kenya, 45 per cent of the population is estimated to live below the poverty line. The proportion is largest in the countryside, but there is greater inequality in the cities, where the richest – that is, those who eat, have coffee, and shop here – live.

  In the shopping centre’s grocery store, they sell one pack of seven disposable pads for between 0.50 and 0.80 US dollars, depending on the brand. For once, there are also tampons: 16 of them for 1.50 US dollars. Menstrual cups are sold neither in the grocery store nor in the shopping centre’s pharmacy.