Menstruation is normal, period

Nepali activist Radha Paudel who works on dignified menstruation through her foundation shows in her new book just how pervasive menstrual discrimination is around the world. 

Menstrual Stories: An Anthology from Global South is replete with tales of stigma, taboo, mockery, disrespect, shame, teasing, bullying by boys that persists. 

Radha Paudel is a nurse who has worked in government hospitals across Nepal, and wrote an harrowing account about being caught up in the Maoist attack on Jumla in 2002. She turned into a dignified menstruation activist because of the discrimination and ostracisation she herself faced while growing up in Chitwan.

She established the Global South Coalition for Dignified Menstruation and Radha Paudel Foundation which hosted a six-month virtual fellowship in 2023 with participants from Austria, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Malawai, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and the UK. 

The book is an outcome of those interactions where campaigners across the world spoke about their own experiences of having their first periods, the reaction of their families, school mates and peers.

A thread running through all the stories is that no matter where in the world women are, rich countries or poor, North or South, educated or uneducated, menstrual taboos persist to a greater or lesser degree.

There are stories of girls not telling their parents because the first bleeding was “too sensitive”, the restrictions on the freedom of young women by family members, schools not teaching reproductive health with accuracy and the right values.

In one school in Dhaka, biology text books had the chapter on sexual reproduction stapled shut. Many young men in Colombia’s conservative Catholic families even refused to answer questions in a survey about menstruation, and some confused menstruation with masturbation.

In Nepal, the lack of separate restrooms for girls in schools and shame about menstruation has contributed to the high female dropout rate after Grade 5. The practice of chhaupadi in western Nepal is an extreme form of menstrual banishment. 

Paudel does not like the word chhaupadi because it is “too neutral”, and does not convey the discrimination.

The books also has examples of women across the world resisting the stigma and taboos, and spreading awareness. 

A marathon runner in the UK recently ran without pads and ‘let the blood flow freely’. A Chinese athlete who won a medal at an international sports event was frank in her answer to a question from the media about her performance: she said she was having her periods.

Writes Laura Contreras-Aristizabal from Colombia: “It is ironic that despite the fact that more than half of the world’s population is made up of women and menstruating individuals, menstruation is still stigmatized and a taboo subject.”

We know there are even more serious problems of female genital mutilation in some parts of the world. But for the more pervasive and persistent occurrence of menstural discrmination, this slim volume offers practical solutions in schools and society to ensure a more dignified approach to accepting the monthly biological cycle in women without stigma.