Free sanitary pads at school no more, girls forced to play truant
THE MONTHLY STRUGGLE A Delhi government scheme to provide free sanitary napkins to all female students come to a halt in November 2016 as the tender ended. While the selection of a company for the job is still a few months away, many girls have to stay a
In a dingy washroom at her home in a slum colony in south-east Delhi, a 15-year-old girl saw blood flowing down her thighs. Unaware of what was happening to her, she assumed she had a terrible disease, and screamed.
Her mother rushed in and comforted her daughter, saying that this was a natural phenomenon that all girls go through after a certain age. The mother explained how to use a sanitary pad.
The next day, when the girl went to Class 10 at her south-east Delhi government school and informed her teachers about her condition, she was given a free packet of sanitary napkins.
In 2011, four years before the Class 10 student’s first period, the Delhi government had announced a scheme with an annual budget of ~12-15 crore to give provide sanitary napkins to all female students.
Sonu Nijhawan, principal of the Government Girls’ Senior Secondary School in Sangam Vihar, said the program made “a huge difference for girls, for multiple reasons”. Previously, said Nijhawan, she would send menstruating girls home. The new scheme “helped (girls) maintain personal hygiene, kept them regular in school, and eased the financial burden on some really poor families.”
But since November 2016, the program has come to a halt. The initial tender given to provide the napkins ended, and a new one, issued last December, included requirements that none of the applicants could meet. Another tender, issued this August, elicited seven qualified applicants. Yet according to the Delhi Directorate of Education (DOE) sources, it might be another month or two before they can decide which company is most suitable and the supply of sanitary napkins can be restored. DOE did not respond to a detailed questionnaire sent on the matter.
In the meantime, Nijhawan said she’s returned to sending girls home. Around eight lakh girls aged 10-18 in the government school system are undergoing a monthly struggle. They are deprived of the support the Class 10 student received back in 2015.
With the new GST rate of 12% on sanitary napkins making them expensive for poor families, and given the superstitions regarding periods that exist in Indian society, menstruation is the most common reason for truancy among female students, according to 12 girls attending government schools interviewed by Hindustan Times. At least 9 of them had attendance lower than 75%, the minimum required to sit for board exams. All of them requested anonymity and seemed uncomfortable discussing a topic many in India view as taboo.
Without free sanitary napkins provided at school, many girls are forced to use rags and secondhand cloth, alternatives that put girls at risk of multiple types of infection. Meanwhile, girls also report that they are not getting an adequate level of education about menstrual health.
The former Class 10 student, for example, “didn’t know much about” menstruation at the time of her first period. “Even though most of my friends used to menstruate,” she said, “we never talked about it.” She had attended a class in school about menstruation once in Class 7, but “I couldn’t understand it much”. She misses school, she said, for at least two days whenever she gets a period, in part due to the condition of the washroom in her school. These are the typical consequen- ces of a school system that is not doing enough to support young girls.
COST OF A PAD
A packet of sanitary napkins with eight pads costs between ~30 and ~80 across India. For girls whose families make between ~5,000 and ~10,000 monthly, this is a financial burden. Delhi’s government-provided packets of sanitary napkins had 10 free pads, which were sometimes enough to get a girl through a whole month.
Besides the lack of sanitary napkins, a host of other attendant sources of pain and embarrassment encourage girls to skip school. A principal of a government school in south Delhi, who requested anonymity to speak freely, listed a few factors. “If a girl, while she is in physical discomfort, doesn’t have access to sanitary napkins and has to deal with the worry about what will people say if she stains her clothes and then has to use an unclean washroom,” she said, then “chances are she may skip school altogether.”
A retired deputy director of education, who helped with the implementation of the program to distribute sanitary napkins, said the initiative grew out of an increasing awareness that many girls were not using healthy menstrual practices, and that this was leading to truancy.
“There are many reasons why girls miss school, and it was one of them,” she said of menstruation. “So some principals took an initiative and kept sanitary napkins in school on their own expenditure. Eventually the government decided to start the scheme.”
BREAKING TABOOS
For women all over India, the power of social taboos and the deprivation of poverty combine to hamper menstrual health. A 2011 study conducted by AC Nielsen, a global survey company, found that only 12% of India’s 355 million menstruating women use sanitary napkins and that 88% of women resort to unsanitised cloth, ash and husk sand.
Women who use these improvised alternatives get reproductive tract infections 70% more frequently. They are also more likely to get an infection of the vagina, urinary tract, or even uterus.
“The topic is such a taboo in most families that young girls are not even taught about menstrual hygiene and health,” said Bandana Sodhi, a gynecologist who recently helped produce an educational comic book on the subject. “Especially in rural areas and conservative societies, there are restrictions on moving around, praying, and eating.” In 2015, the Indian government issued menstrual hygiene management guidelines that acknowledged the topic was taboo and stressed the need to change social practices. The guidelines emphasised the need for teachers to address menstrual hygiene in school, where girls can learn habits to be continued over the rest of their lives.
Principals and teachers both say that providing sanitary napkins is only one of many measures needed to improve girls’ menstrual health. An Educational and Vocational Guidance Counsellor is supposed to provide information about issues around menstruation, but not every school has one. Delhi schools do give classes on menstrual health, but they occur only once a year.
“As teachers, our role is also to break the taboos around menstruation and tell girls that they need not be ashamed about it,” said one female government-school teacher with over 13 years of experience. “They can enter kitchen, go out and just basically live their life as usual.”