Addressing Menstruation Critical To Women’s Social Progress, Health

Devex: #MenstruationMatters to all, not just girls
Brian Arbogast, director of the Water, Sanitation & Hygiene program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

“…Lack of water and sanitation and access to menstrual hygiene products … impacts women’s and girls’ health, dignity, comfort, and ability to fully participate in their communities. … Information about menstruation is all too often severely lacking. … We need … to make menstrual hygiene products more widely available and affordable. And these policies have to be coupled with increased efforts to provide universal and sustainable sanitation systems, access to clean water, and safe disposal. … But if we are going to tackle taboos and drive progress, the fight can’t just be left to women. We all benefit, whatever our gender, from a world in which women can contribute fully and fairly…” (5/27).

The Guardian: We don’t know enough about menstruation and girls are paying a price
Bibi van der Zee, editor of the Global Development Professionals Network, and Katherine Purvis, journalist

“…For millions of [girls], a universal lack of clear information and education makes menstruation a source of shame and embarrassment. … That sense of shame, the sense of being guilty of an activity so secret that that no one will even talk about it, is then compounded by cultural prejudices and beliefs around menstruation which vary from country to country and region to region. … The new generation of researchers and campaigners who now are shaking this subject out of the shadows are determined, however, that things are going to change…” (5/28).

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