Every spring, on 28 May, the international community commemorates a World Menstrual Hygiene Day. This day was initiated by the German NGO WASH United in 2014.
It aims to break taboos and raise awareness of the importance of good menstrual hygiene among women, and in particular adolescent girls, around the world. The international community commemorates World Menstrual Hygiene Day every spring on 28 May.
This day is an essential opportunity to become informed and combat stereotypes: "The first way to combat stereotypes and prejudice is through education. If false beliefs persist, it's because there's a lack of education and information on the subject.
Menstruation must not be a source of inequality: it unfairly penalises women and young girls, particularly those living in rural areas. No girl should be excluded from school because of her period.
Menstruation around the world
In all cultures and religions, girls' menstruation has always been a taboo.
For some men, having sex with a woman when she is menstruating is unthinkable. Female menstrual blood is considered impure.
In some parts of Africa, women are relegated to a hut reserved for them. In some Christian churches (in Ethiopia, for example), women are not allowed inside the church (are they menstruating by any chance?). They have to pray outside the building, sometimes in stifling heat, sheltered by a parasol. In Islam, a woman who has the misfortune to menstruate in Mecca is not allowed to turn again and again, according to the ritual, around the great black stone called the Kaaba. For the same reason, ultra-Orthodox Muslims do not greet a woman by touching her hand. Among Jews, when a couple share the same bed and the woman is menstruating, a cushion is placed between the two spouses so that they do not touch.
In Europe, attitudes were not so different. Many young girls hid what they felt to be a kind of shame. It is only recently that sanitary towels have been introduced for girls in some modern secondary schools.
Figures to break a taboo
From their first menstrual period to the menopause, women menstruate an average of 460 times. That's the equivalent of around 3,500 days of their lives, spilling 22 litres of menstrual blood and spending more than CHF 4,400 over the course of a lifetime! So why is this still such a taboo subject? Menstruation is a completely normal biological process.
But even today, a third of the world's teenage girls are ashamed of having their period. Clichés and discrimination are still present in the daily lives of girls and women. Even in France, 35% of young girls admit to having been victims or witnesses of teasing about their periods.
Menstrual precariousness and the lack of clean, appropriate toilets in schools exacerbate the drop-out rate. At least 500 million girls and women around the world lack adequate sanitary facilities.
Together, let's break the taboos surrounding menstruation!
