MORE THAN EDUCATION:
By Bella Pich
BREAKING DOWN
Menstrual Barriers
Photo by Sa ' adia Khan
Imagine being a young girl growing up in a remote mountain village in Pakistan, with access to few resources. While there is no government school located close enough to your village for you to reach on foot, you are overjoyed to be enrolled in a community school established by Central Asia Institute. There, you excel at your studies, particularly reading and writing, and hope to one day become a teacher yourself.
But that all comes to a halt when you begin menstruating. Although menstruation is a natural part of life for every female, your school does not have private, gendersegregated bathrooms and you lack access to the hygiene and sanitary products needed to properly manage your period. To make matters worse, menstruation is viewed as a culturally taboo subject, entangled in complex social stigmas, so you are overwhelmed with embarrassment and shame about your body.
Soon, the harsh reality sets in: your only option is to drop out of school. No more reading or writing. No more seeing your friends. And most painful of all, your dream of becoming a teacher slips from reach.
Sadly, this situation is all too common in developing countries, where girls face numerous barriers to accessing education, including poverty, lack of government schools, and conservative social and cultural norms that confine them to domestic roles. Keeping girls enrolled in school can also be a challenge, with one of the most pervasive hidden barriers being menstruation.
According to WaterAid, over 400 million children globally lack access to functioning or gender-segregated toilets 1. In many cases, schoolgirls are the ones who suffer the most, especially in rural areas, having no clean, private spaces to change menstrual products, if those products are even available.
Due to the social stigma surrounding menstruation, most girls are underprepared for and uneducated about their periods. As a result, many feel ashamed of their bodies and are unable to openly discuss the topic. This shame can negatively impact their mental health and lead to many missed school days— or even dropping out entirely, effectively stifling their future career plans. That’ s why safe, segregated wash areas and comprehensive menstrual
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