The woeful reverse migration phenomena exhibited by Indian migrant population during the onset of the Covid-19 outbreak has aggravated the invisibility of a major noiseless crisis identified as “period poverty”. A plethora of pitiful images of a frail woman in “salwar-kameez” with torn luggage bag birthing on the road and teenage girls in leather “chappals” cycling nearly 1,200 kms with a wounded father have rocked the internet, gaining nationwide sympathy and gazillions of sad reactions and double taps.
Do you think these miserable women and teenage girls’ citizenry have the luxury of menstruating safely with dignity?
The menstrual health management sector of India, which includes access to sanitary products monthly, clean and well-equipped toilets with running water and soap and proper knowledge of safe menstruation is in a very depressing state. The economic “she-cession” fuelled by nearly 47% of Asian women migrants are highly vulnerable to unsafe menstrual hygiene.
A report by an NGO Dasra published in 2014 revealed that nearly 23 million girls drop out of school annually after they hit puberty. To fight against this, the government started enabling state-run schools and other educational and medical institutes in rural and semi-rural areas to distribute disposable sanitary napkins to all the teenage girls and women monthly.
But, since the lockdown of schools in early March, girls at home are forced to move back to home-grown cloth rags or cotton due to lack of purchasing power capacity. 2–3 women even use the same piece of cloth for several months. The women run community centres and NGOs were unable to reach out to needful beneficiaries due to strict social distancing norms.
India’s Female Labour Force Participation Rate, which is a steeply declining, is also lowest among the developed nations of the world. Self-employed rural women in the informal sector, daily wage labourers in MSMEs or construction sites, house helpers and the other huge population who have lost jobs in the pandemic are unable to afford basic food items and medicines to run their family. In this scenario, purchasing sanitary napkins for themselves would be the very last thing on their mind.
In a majority of cases, the sole bread earning male members have also refused to buy pads, terming them as “not essential” and “expensive”. Women residing in tier 1 or 2 cities also showed indifference to invest in a new stock of tampons, panty liners or menstrual cups due to the cash crunch.
The sordid state of government institutional quarantine centres and public toilets on roads also proved to be challenging for migrant women and Covid patients. 4–5 people are forced to share single toilets while residing in dingy rooms. The unsanitary condition and degraded quality food can lead to urinary tract infections, cervical cancer and other major health issues.
In many orthodox areas, practising taboos like Chhaupadi in Nepal have been draconian for women in this lockdown. Now imagine the condition of a menstruating migrant woman returning to her village from a far-away metro city and then being treated as untouchable and subjected to live in isolated huts in a starving condition.
The double burden of caregiving as well as earning, has also taken a huge toll on the physical and mental health of women invisible workers in menses. The increasing number of family members due to work-from-home nature of jobs has a positive correlation with an increasing workload. The incidences of domestic abuse, wife-beating, marital rape and torture on women have increased manifold in this lockdown.
Shouldn’t dealing with feminine biological processes like menstruation, peacefully and safely, be a part of Right to Life? Women and adolescent girls also face differential access to technology which leads to a lack of proper information regarding SRHR or other health-related topics.
To tackle this health disparity, restocking and distribution of menstrual supplies as essential items free-of-cost to beneficiaries should be done urgently. Working on the betterment of WASH infrastructure at institutional quarantine centres is also a major need of the hour. In a close-knit rural setting, health workers, after taking precautions should start routine health checkups and impart education regarding making cloth pad at home, sustainable disposable options and hygiene practices in order to make menstruation less worrisome in such trying times.
NGOs can collaborate with Gram Sabhas to supply hygiene kits. Legislative rules on re-skilling or up-skilling of the unemployed female workforce will also help to fight poverty and ensure affordability of napkins. Let’s join our helping hands together and pledge to wipe out period poverty and period stigma from our socio-cultural environment by 2030.