Chronicle Editor
Hazel Marimbiza
AGARTHA (not her real name), a 17- year-old girl from Kusile District in Matabeleland North Province remembers her first monthly period.
“I was 13 years old when I had my first period and I was surprised. I had gone to the borehole to fetch water and upon my return, I realised my dress was soiled. My mother was the first to see the stain, so she requested me to go to the bathroom to check. Indeed it was blood! She told me I had started my periods and that it was normal. She told me to take a bath, gave me a pad and showed me how to use it,” Agartha narrated.
“However, I felt ashamed, because I remembered that some boys had been laughing at me at the borehole but I didn’t know why.”
The laughing did not stop at home. One day at school, Agartha soiled her dress during a lesson because she sometimes used rags as her parents couldn’t afford pads every month.
“The boys laughed at me, they didn’t know anything about menstruation. They all ran away and the girls too felt ashamed,” she said.
Agartha is just an example of many girls that face stigma during their monthly menstrual periods.
While the world recently commemorated Menstrual Health Day on May 28, it should be noted that we cannot completely campaign for menstrual health without breaking all the stigma and taboos around menstruation.
Menstruation is a biological function as routine as sleeping or breathing, with more than 800 million girls and women experiencing it on any particular day. Yet, in a recent study, 62 percent of women and 59 percent of men described it as embarrassing to talk about, and only 60 percent (of both men and women) find it acceptable for women to mention that they’re having their period.
One survey established that in Zimbabwe, 54 percent of girls are mocked or stigmatised during menstruation; while 26 percent are isolated and 13 percent are called names by boys. If menstruation is a natural reality, then why should girls and women suffer like this? Why should they be punished for simply being who they are? And why should that be allowed to happen?
Girls and women bleed, period! In Zimbabwe, about three million girls and women menstruate every month. Menstruation is natural.
To then associate that natural process with dirt, disgust, shame, fear or as a women’s thing often creates taboos that constrain human development.
Damaging myths restrict girls’ movements when they have their period, which can then affect their attendance and performance at school.
The stigma attached to menstruation can also lead to teasing, shaming and exclusion from daily activities, which all have a negative effect on a girl’s sense of dignity.
In some cases, many adolescent girls struggle to understand what’s happening to their bodies when they have their first period. Some young girls may not even know what’s happening when they have their first period and they’re too frightened to tell anyone. And this is why ending period shame, smashing damaging myths and normalising menstruation is so important. The taboos surrounding periods have to be broken for women’s menstrual health management (MHM) to improve.
All of those taboos arise from a lack of appropriate knowledge and information about periods. Boys and men become perpetrators of violence against menstruating women largely because they have little or no access to correct information and mainly rely on the taboos that have been inculcated into them over the years. Some of these taboos are located right in the pockets of culture and religion and are practised with reckless abandon.
In some cultures in the country, girls having their periods must be isolated from their peers and menstruation should be kept a secret. By keeping it a secret, it then leaves the menstruating girl to bear alone all the pains and sufferings it entails. She cannot ask for sanitary pads or pain relievers to at least manage the pains of stomach cramps. Some girls end up missing school for days with some women also unable to do their work. Some are forced into sex work just to get money to buy sanitary wear so that they can go to school.
Luckily for some of the girls in rural areas, various civic organisations and Government bodies are now devising initiatives to ensure that reaching puberty doesn’t condemn girls to miss school or drop out altogether.
The Real Open Opportunities for Transformation Support (Roots), a grassroots organisation that has been combating child marriages and gender-based violence in Zimbabwe, has embarked on a campaign to have dialogues with schoolgirls in rural areas on stigma and taboos surrounding menstruation.
Roots has stepped in to have dialogues with schoolgirls in areas such as Mazowe, Bindura, Chivi, Zaka, Lupane and Harare.
Throughout the year, Roots prioritises MHM as a key focus area for the organisation, impacting how menstrual health is talked about and advocated for across Africa.
Communications and advocacy officer for Roots, Ms Sandra Muzama, said they had dialogues with adolescents and deliberated on the stigma and taboos around menstruation which continue to impede on the dignity of girls and women during their time of the month.
“Girls are still facing some cultural myths such as that when you are on your period you are not supposed to cook or plait anyone’s hair, it can fall off. Some extreme cultures even shun a bleeding woman and demand that they be isolated during that time and this hinders their social and psychological well-being and even miss school or work being closed up in a dark room. These cultures are still very much in practice,” said Ms Muzama.
Cultural and religious taboos and limiting social norms make it challenging to teach and talk about menstrual health. This directly affects the girl’s self-esteem, health and education, and continues to strengthen gender inequalities.
In recent years, women and a growing number of men have challenged that narrative, insisting that menstruation be treated as the normal physiological function it is.
In 2016, in response to the limited work being done to help women, girls, and even men, understand the importance of MHM, Speak Up Africa (SUA) created the “No Taboo Periods” campaign, which focuses on helping everyone in the community understand the role MHM plays in enabling women and girls to reach their full potential.
“As an organisation, our job is to ”speak up” and this subject matter is close to our hearts. There is a lot to be done, but we want to create a new normal around menstrual hygiene management. Giving women and girls access to reliable information, synthesizing men around the topic, and encouraging policymakers to prioritize MHM are key to improving the health, education and living conditions of women and girls. We want to be a part of keeping MHM at the top of both social and political agendas,” said Yacine Djibo, executive director of SUA.
United Nations experts say persistent harmful socio-cultural norms, stigma, misconceptions and taboos around menstruation, continue to lead to exclusion and discrimination of women and girls.
They highlight that more needs to be done globally to address the menstrual health needs of women and girls and transform the systems, norms and attitudes to support women’s and girls’ menstrual health and well-being and also state that a global shift in cultures is needed to respect menstruation, acknowledge it as a human rights issue and eliminate discrimination, shame and stigma too often attached to it. — @HazelMarimbiza
Online Reporter