Period poverty: In Africa, women are being priced out of buying sanitary ware

Zoboomafoo , 10 months ago

“They can’t afford modern products so they’re slapping together imitations out of trash”

Did they not have a functioning system before tampons were invented?

argv_minus_one , 10 months ago

This is Africa we’re talking about. That whole continent was the playground of ruthless European colonizers for centuries, and I’m under the impression it wasn’t exactly a paradise before that, either. So, probably not.

ArmoredThirteen , 10 months ago

This was my snap initial thought too but it does not hold up well. Their previous system may not be sanitary by today’s standards, could be impractical to access in modern times, or socially humiliating now. Even if all of those were non concerns though I believe we should still be able to provide modern solutions to people requesting them instead of writing it off as “be happy with the solution you had yesterday”

xuxebiko , 10 months ago

:(

library_napper , 10 months ago

Meh. How many decades do menstral cups and reuaabele pads last?

xuxebiko , 10 months ago

maybe they're not easily available or are too expensive?

library_napper , 10 months ago

They’re liberally cheaper. That’s the point.

EssentialCoffee , 10 months ago

So I looked up the price of a menstrual cup in Ghana. I converted the price to USD, since that’s what the article is in.

Asking someone to pay $14 out of their $26 monthly salary when they’re already struggling with paying $3 per month is both an unhelpful and ridiculous suggestion. Do you want these folks to bleed all over themselves for five months while they save up for an option that might or might not work for them? They deserve more dignity than that.

kurogane , 10 months ago

Easy to say, for areas where drinkable water is scarce

charlytune , 10 months ago

I don’t even want to know what kind of infections someone could get from using a menstrual cup they’re unable to sterilise.

library_napper , 10 months ago

Are you so classist that you think poor people dont have the ability to boil water?

charlytune , 10 months ago

That’s quite a reach there. Of course I don’t think that. But just saying ‘duh use menstrual cups’ is a classist response. Where resources are more scarce they need to be prioritised, and so some people may not have water or fuel to spare to boil a menstrual cup, or the privacy to do it in eg if a stove is shared. Let alone access to menstrual cups’ in the first place (which cost around £30 in the UK and so are already priced out of the range of a lot of people on low incomes).

autotldr Bot , 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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While Ghana was the country with the least affordable menstrual products of those we surveyed, women across Africa are struggling with “period poverty” - something activists are trying to change.

According to our research, a woman in Ghana earning a minimum wage of $26 a month would have to spend $3, or one in every $7 they make to buy two packets of sanitary towels containing eight pads.

Francisca Sarpong Owusu, a researcher at the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) in Ghana, says many vulnerable girls and women are using cloth rags which they line with plastic sheets, cement paper bags and dried plantain stems when menstruating because they cannot afford disposable sanitary towels.

Many menstrual health activists say removing “tampon taxes” is one way to help women inch closer to accessing and affording sanitary products.

Across Africa, and the world, lack of access to menstrual hygiene products due to high cost or because they’re not available in rural or remote areas has had a huge impact on millions of women.

South African campaigner Nokuzola lives with endometriosis, a disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside it and can make menstruation very painful.

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I’m a bot and I’m open source!