‘We weren’t allowed to serve food to our parents during menstruation’ | Women’s Rights

“When I was young, a girl who had her first period was scared and scared,” says Burkinabé grandmother Marie, 73, to her daughter, Aminata, and her teenage granddaughter, Nassiratou, 18 – who calls her grandmother “Yaaba.”

The three women sit together under a tree in their village in west-central Burkina Faso, forming balls of seeds to make a condiment called soumbala. “The girl’s mother gave her a sheepskin to sleep on until the bleeding stopped,” confides Marie. “At that time, girls and women were isolated during menstruation. They washed the sheepskin and protective cloths every day, which is why, in the Moore language, we use the word ‘washing’ to refer to the time of menstruation.”

In Paraguay, grandmother Maria, aged 73, also shared her experience of menstruation with her daughter Ester, aged 51, and granddaughter Alma, aged 16, Ester’s niece. “We didn’t usually talk about it,” says Maria. “We, in secret, had to deal with it and there were no pads or anything. You had to use cloths, wash and iron.”

On any given day, in every corner of the world, around 300 million women and girls menstruate, according to a report prepared by a group of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that advocate investment in menstrual health. [PDF]. At the same time, one in four does not have access to menstrual health products or clean bathrooms reserved for girls, according to a report by the nonprofit social change advisory group FSG.

Some are forced to use materials such as old newspapers, rags, earth, sand, ash, grass or leaves to control menstruation – like grandmother Bui Non in Cambodia, who, as a young girl, used pieces of sarong as makeshift sanitary pads. “I cut the fabric into pieces,” says Bui Non, 57. “After a week, I buried or burned these tissues.”

Long-standing taboos, stigmas and myths still abound in many rural communities around the world, with a culture of silence and shame often surrounding the issue of menstruation. Beninese grandmother Angel remembers how women in her time couldn’t cook over a fire or serve food to their parents if they were menstruating.

For Inna, a Togolese grandmother, things were even more challenging. “The family had to find a room on the side of the road where the menstruating girl would spend her entire period. Afterwards, the family alerted the entire village.” Yet in many communities, girls are excluded from everyday life and opportunities, especially school, when they are menstruating.

Today, when girls are able to manage and talk about their periods, it is often due to long-standing community health projects that work with girls and boys, women and men to encourage intergenerational dialogue to break taboos and barriers to menstrual health. “It’s a rights issue,” says Inna’s 16-year-old granddaughter, Denise, who – like all the teenagers in this article – takes part in such a community project, run by Plan International, a humanitarian organization that works to promote rights and children’s equality. for girls in 80 countries around the world.

“Before, no head of the family allowed a discussion session like the one we have today about menstruation in their family”, agrees Aminata in Burkina Faso. “The change these days is clear.”