by Dr SHENILA KHOJA-MOOLJI
A shot from a recent ad mocking ridiculous tampon commercials PHOTO/Huffington Post
In recent years, sanitary products have made their entrance in girls’ empowerment campaigns, with NGOs and behemoth healthcare companies advocating menstrual hygiene. In fact, May 28 has been declared as the ‘Menstrual Hygiene Day.’
While advocacy efforts that seek to enhance the well-being of girls are welcome, these campaigns construct the figure of the ‘Third World Girl’ through deficit frames, encourage consumption of particular products, and install transnational companies and experts as ideally suited to empower girls.
Societies that engage in practices around menstruation that might not involve sanitary pads or that consider it inappropriate to discuss menstruation publicly are cast as pre-modern and backward. For instance, an article in The Guardian on the Nepali practice of chhaupadi, where menstruating women observe seclusion, blames “low development rates, gender inequality, community tradition and high illiteracy” for its continuation. Similar sentiments are expressed about the practice of goakor in India.
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