Women speak out about menstruation

GUADALAJARA (EFE).— Mexican university students joined together yesterday to speak out loudly about menstruation, on the occasion of World Menstrual Hygiene Day, which commemorates this biological process surrounded by taboos and for which there is not enough infrastructure in educational institutions.

“Talking about menstruation is something that is not normally done. This experience that we women have is super important and there are not always spaces where we can talk or we do not take our experiences seriously,” said Grecia Rivas, a graduate of the Sociology program at the University of Guadalajara (UdeG).

The 23-year-old participated in the workshop “I Menstruate,” in which she said that she grew up in an environment where it was not allowed to talk about one’s own body, much less about menstrual bleeding. Now, after a process of education on the subject, she considers it important for women to talk about what happens in their bodies.

“It is about taking ownership, it is a way of redefining all these feelings that we go through in the process of menstruation and also taking ownership of our body, inhabiting our body with a lot of dignity,” she said.

Rosario Ramírez, an academic from the Social Sciences campus of the University of Guadalajara and co-coordinator of the workshop, held on the occasion of World Menstruation Day, explained that the taboos surrounding the menstrual period condition the way in which women experience it.

“It is a taboo and what this means is feeling fear, disgust, shame, having these sensations and emotions that sometimes are not our own, but rather, based on how ideas have been culturally constructed around menstruation, we make them our own,” she explained. For the specialist, it is important that there are public spaces to talk about what this natural process means for women.

“We do talk about menstruation, but in safe spaces with our friends, with people we feel comfortable talking to about our bodies, but we rarely do so in public spaces, and the university, as a public space, should also be that space,” she said.

Menstrual shame

Susana Muñiz, who coordinated the first university survey on menstruation, “Fluye con seguro” (Flow Safely), the only one of its kind, said that they approached 2,700 women in high school and college to find out how the menstrual cycle is experienced on a daily basis and in the classroom.

The survey revealed that 90% of those surveyed suffer from discomfort, which can be very intense for half of them.

In addition, 4.1% of young female students lack the financial resources to buy sanitary pads and use other strategies to manage their menstrual cycle.

She stressed that the sociocultural conditions surrounding menstruation are the most serious, as the survey showed that 57% of women during their menstrual cycle have felt disgust, shame, fear or are sexualized when they are bleeding.

“This implies that they have feelings of rejection towards themselves for something completely natural like their body. One in two said that they would prefer not to menstruate, that is, they would like not to be a woman in order not to go through all that and that is very serious,” she warned.

The academic said that many educational institutions in Jalisco are not designed to facilitate menstrual management due to a lack of adequate sanitary services, which sometimes even lack water, soap or trash cans.

“The consequences of this taboo, this shame, this silence can be seen in the question of access to health and human rights. Because we cannot speak out, we do not have adequate training, there is a lot of misinformation,” she lamented.

As part of the parallel work of the survey, the University of Guadalajara launched the menstrual management program in which menstrual products will be given away every semester to 7,000 women in vulnerable economic conditions.