Step up provision of sanitary pads to raise numbers in schools

Tomorrow, May 28, is Global Menstrual Hygiene Day, hence my focus on this delicate but important issue. This day, celebrated first in 2014, seeks to create awareness on menstruation, break taboos surrounding it and raise awareness on the importance of good menstrual hygiene management worldwide. Let me start with a personal story.

I still shudder when I remember my first exposure to a girl having her menstrual cramps. This was 40 years ago. I was in class 5 and one of my female classmates, being more mature, started bleeding in the middle of our morning break.

The girl, shocked as the rest of us, started running out of the school compound. In our naivety, believing she had procured an abortion, we chased her out of the school compound calling her all manner of names. She never showed up in school again.

Fast forward to today. While girls may not be chased by mobs for having their periods, a monthly tragedy still befalls the girl child in most rural and low income urban neighborhoods. Until four years ago, I had not realised this issue was such a national crisis and that it was having such a devastating impact on girls’ education.

This was during a visit to my primary school alma mater, the same school from which we had chased the unfortunate girl 40 plus years ago.

I learnt that on average, half of the girls missed a week of school every month since they could neither afford pads nor the accompanying underwear that was necessary for proper management of this most natural of a woman’s reality.

I then undertook to write frequently on this subject and to also invest in ensuring that at least for my alma mater, this challenge would be a thing of the past.

Today’s article is part of that commitment. I am pleased to note that since my exposure to the gravity of the challenge, several positive changes have occurred.

Awareness on the issue has increased. This awareness and pressure by different constituencies, including the women’s lobby in Parliament, has led to government budgeting more resources to provide free pads to schools in poorer parts of the country.

The problem with this classification into poor and wealthy areas is that the marginalisation of the girl child, particularly on this issue, hardly respects economic differentials.

Girls from areas that are considered economically endowed suffer in silence because of cultural and social taboos on the subject. My village in Murang’a for example is considered relatively well endowed, yet girls were predictably missing school, courtesy of their periods. Another positive development is that many NGOs and private persons have joined the campaign to ensure that girls no longer undergo this “punishment” of missing school.

In my alma mater, young professionals have taken over this responsibility allowing me to expand my territory; though to be honest, this is one obligation that I have to be reminded otherwise it easily goes to the back burner. A more interesting development is the availability of sanitary pads at very subsidised prices and the availability of more sustainable options including the reusable menstrual cups. While all these developments have led to a reduction in the challenge, we are far from eradicating the problem.

Girls continue to suffer and pay a heavy price on their educational performance due to this calamity. One solution to this issue is for government to provide all girls, initially in public primary schools, with pads as a necessary item of facilitating learning; just like they do with set books.

With the innovative, good quality but relatively cheap products that are now available, this small gesture would have but a nominal impact on our budget. At a time when both the Cabinet Secretary and the Principal Secretary responsible for youth are women, at a time when we are expanding the space for women in our public life, this is the bare minimum the girl child should expect.

—The writer is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya