What Will It Take To Put An End To Period Shaming?

The atmosphere was filled with hot air as Tayo leaned on his desk that afternoon, writing an assessment. The collar of his white uniform had turned brown and his forehead dripped sweat. They had just finished playing football through the long break and the assessment was the final class for the day. One after the other, they submitted their assessments to the teacher and waited for the teacher to return their notes after marking. Halimah was the first person to finish and as she walked through the column to submit her work, her classmates sniggered. She wasn’t aware of why her classmates were laughing until she noticed they were staring at her bottom. She dragged her uniform to the side and that was when she saw it – blood. She was on her period.

This was many years ago when Tayo was in Senior Secondary School. As he narrated the episode to me, there was a pint of regret in his voice. Throughout secondary school, Halimah became a subject of heckling by her classmates. She was isolated even by her female friends because she was considered dirty and unclean.

“I regret laughing on that day and the days that followed because I didn’t know.” While Tayo and his classmates’ reaction to Halimah could be blamed on naiveness, it is also a product of the society they grew up in where menstruating women are stigmatised as dirty and unclean. The stigma culture is not peculiar only to Nigeria but experienced by almost every woman in the world. In a report by Stanford University, THINX – a retailer of menstrual products that advocates for ending period stigma – conducted a study that found that “Forty-two per cent of women have experienced period-shaming.”

“Till now, I don’t think I am comfortable discussing about period publicly,” Tayo, now 27, says. His perspective is a reflection of others like him who perceive period as something to be discussed in muffled voices. Consequently, this allows for the stigmatisation to thrive.

In some cases, religion plays a part. In Islam, menstruating women are considered unclean and are restricted from religious activities like observing the obligatory prayers and fasting. So the women, instead of saying they are menstruating, say they are “off prayer.” And as a culture, anything that is not expressly named or identified as what it is is referred to as secret. For instance, it is considered immoral to expressly call penis or vagina or sex by its actual names/words. Instead, we say private parts and describe sex as “sleeping together”. This has made it quite difficult to make expressions like “we sleep together in the same bed” without suggesting a pragmatic meaning of sex.

Many years ago, Aisha Salahudeen, a Nigerian journalist, was sitting in a UTME examination hall when her period came unannounced. It was discomforting and she had to request to be excused from the hall to take care of herself. When she announced to the invigilator, Mrs Gbadebo, that she wanted to take care of her period, Mrs Gbadebo was surprised Aisha could announce her period publicly. “You should be ashamed,” Mrs Gbadebo said.

“Like the women in my family, she saw it as immoral to mention menstruation publicly, especially in mixed company,” Aisha wrote. Menstruation – a woman’s period – is a natural biological process in which the body sheds the lining of the uterus – blood. It is a regular part of the menstrual cycle, a series of changes that occur in a woman’s body roughly every 28 days. So when something that is biologically natural is considered immoral, it has been disrespected. And when it is disrespected, it is stigmatised. This has significant impacts and influences on various aspects of menstruating girls and women such as health, education, and engagement in both public and social activities.

The stigmatisation has furthermore hindered the majority of women from openly discussing their menstrual experiences. According to a 2018 survey, over 79% of girls and young women encountered symptoms related to their menstrual cycle that worried them, yet they refrained from seeking advice from a doctor or healthcare professional. Likewise, statistics from Endometriosis UK indicate that 62% of women aged 16-54 would delay seeking medical attention for symptoms of endometriosis because they believe the issues are not significant enough to trouble a doctor, feel embarrassed or doubt they would be taken seriously, or consider symptoms like painful periods to be normal. In the United States, about 60% of women still feel ashamed of talking about menstruation.

What perpetrators of stigmatisation of any form fail to understand is that stigmatising any individual ridicules their existence as a human being.

Preventing Period Shaming

While there are several organisations in Nigeria and around the world creating awareness against period shaming and promoting period education, the public’s response to discussions about period reveals that there’s still a lot to be done. I like to believe that discussions like this start from home where parents counsel their children on body reactions and changes as they grow. Open and healthy discussions should be had about puberty and terms should be explicitly pronounced as what they are for them at the right time.

Moreover, people should not turn deafening ears to education, especially knowledge outside the walls of the classroom. Always, one of the most popular pad companies in the world, when sharing how to prevent period shame mentions that “the more we know, the easier it is to talk about periods.” It also says that we should “call a period, a period” because “phrases like ‘aunt flo’ or ‘that time of the month’ can imply that there’s something to be hidden or ashamed of about periods.”

Rachael Gillibrand,  a lecturer of Premodern History at the University of Leeds wrote, “Of course, we also need to do work on a larger scale. We need to tackle period poverty, ensure access to clean water and private toilets, and encourage employers to develop positive menstrual policies. But we can start by talking. If we can end the secrecy and silence that has long surrounded menstruation, we can begin to create a future that empowers all who menstruate.”

Aisha Salahudeen also maintains that “It’s high time we discard the old-fashioned notions of shame and secrecy attached to menstruation. Let’s talk openly about our periods. Doing this not only combats ignorance and prejudice but also fosters an environment of support, understanding, and empowerment for women.”