There are presently a number of campaigns going on to highlight and raise money for girls and women in developing countries, especially African countries, especially but not only Zimbabwe where, according to an often-quoted statistic, a packet of tampons costs half a month’s wages and women cannot afford them. (Having said that, they often can’t afford food either, even if there were food to buy.)
The problem is that girls and women find themselves unable to manage their periods hygienically or discreetly. This can cause various problems – it can make it difficult or impossible for a girl to attend school or a woman to work if they are unable to manage their blood, with obvious short and long term consequences for them and for their families. Some girls may also wish to hide their menarche from their fathers or other relatives because they know that this sign of sexual maturation is likely to lead to their being taken out of school and married off. So, yes, it is a big problem.
My concern, though, is to be clear on the root causes of these problems, and to understand the motivation of those who seem to offer help. Only then can we have any sort of idea what to do next.
The two big campaigns I have heard about are “Dignity, Period” which seems to be funded by Bodyform (who as Erika points out are owned by Nestle) and “Protecting Futures”, a North American campaign funded by Always/Tampax (owned by Proctor & Gamble). Where names like Nestle and P&G are involved, I am on my guard. Erika sets out pretty much every reason we have to be worried about the involvement of these big companies in the promotion of disposable sanpro for developing countries.
[Correction: Bodyform is not in fact owned by Nestle but by SCA, another global corporation, albeit with a less toxic reputation.]
Infant formula was heavily promoted by big-hitting global companies in poor countries, companies who presented themselves as giving aid and doing good works, companies who evidently did not care that they were destroying a healthy culture of breastfeeding, destroying women’s knowledge of breastfeeding in favour of a dangerous and unsustainable artificial product. They did not care that women in countries with little or no access to clean running water could not use formula milk without creating an extremely serious risk of killing their babies through infections, diarrhoea, gastroenteritis and so on. They did it anyway.
A question I would like to ask Bodyform and Always/Tampax – how much money are you putting into promoting this cause, and advertising the campaigns? and how much money are you raising? Would it be cheaper just to buy a shipment of sanpro and send it over? Or is that missing the point?
Yes, it’s missing the point. Of course it is. The point of these campaigns is not to raise money or awareness or to do what would be most useful to the women and girls who are actually at the butt end of the problem – the point is to promote Bodyform, Always and Tampax in the West and to open up markets in the developing world. The point is to make us believe that BigSanPro is benevolent, and to make women in developing countries believe (as we already believe) that they need Western pads and tampons instead of more sustainable and/or traditional solutions.
Why isn’t dispoable sanpro aid a good solution? Here’s a few reasons:
- When the campaign is over and the freebies have run out, the women will be in the same position as they were before.
- Actually, they may be in a worse position because they may find that their traditional knowledge has been undermined and overwhelmed by the Disposable Message.
- Actually, they may be in a worse position because used sanitary towels will be piling up in the streets*.
- Actually, they may be in a worse position because they will be contributing to carbon emissions and environmental damage that is most likely to affect, guess who? – the very people that this aid has “helped”.
(*When do the rubbish collectors come round in Zimbabwe? Tuesdays? Thursdays?)
OK, so what might help?
Starting with actual menstruation products, I’ve heard recently about two projects which seem to have much more mileage in them than the Great Western Disposable Solution:
1. In an edition of From Our Own Correspondent at the weekend (I think you’ve just about time to listen to it, if you catch this post in the next day or two – it’s towards the end of the World Service edition), there was an item about a project in Uganda where a small factory has been set up to turn weeds into sanitary pads. Apparently these plants grow everywhere, and they are really absorbent naturally so don’t need to be processed anything like as much as the paper or cotton-based pads, so they are much much cheaper than buying imported Western sanpro. I imagine that they will also decompose much more rapidly than Western sanpro which is obviously also important. Women work in the factory, earning money to support themselves and their families, and everyone wins.
2. Poverty Action Lab are doing some research in Nepal into the viability of menstrual cups as a sustainable way for women in developing countries to manage their periods in an age where (sadly!) sitting on moss or straw for a few days just isn’t a realistic option any more. Every reader of this blog now knows what a fan I am of menstrual cups and even if you don’t it must be obvious that this is a far more sustainable solution than paper pads: you only need one of them, and it can be reused month after month for years; they are relatively easy to keep clean even without access to running water (rinse or wipe as often as you can, then boil it up once a month); no waste, no pad-miles, no bloody pads piling up all around the town… What’s not to like?
Turning away from sustainable menstrual products, I want to briefly mention some other issues that are highly relevant.
Access to clean, running water. If people had plenty of clean water to use, they could wash their pads, mooncups, camel skins, or whatever and would not need expensive, wasteful Western “luxuries” like disposable pads.
(And, apart from the 70,001 other problems of not having access to clean water, there is this one: if you cannot wash your hands after you change a pad, then you probably aren’t going to go to work/school even with paper pads. Ironically, the very thing that makes washable pads difficult to manage also makes the “saviour” paper pads difficult to manage. )
Access to clean, running water. This one’s so unbelievably important that I’ll say it again. Give some money to Water Aid (an actual charity, unlike Nestle or P&G). You can buy two taps for £12. Now that’s what I call a Christmas present.
Give them water, and they will go.
Appropriate toilet facilities at schools. Girls don’t go to school while they are menstruating because they do not want to deal with their blood in a shared, open latrine.
Give them privacy, and they will go.
Culture of shame, pubescent marriage and sexual harrassment. Girls don’t go to school while they are menstruating because they don’t want people to know. That’s a Western problem too – a blob of menses on a pair of white jeans being spotted by a boy they fancy is probably the most embarrassing thing that most Western teenage girls could think of… Yet in many places the girls face much worse than embarrassment: menstruation may be accompanied by genuine ostracism, by horror and disgust; menstruation as a sign of sexual maturation may be accompanied by increasing sexual harassment, even by male teachers, and by increasing pressure from relatives to get married, even before school is out.
Give them safety, and they will go.
Further reading:
New York Times: Another School Barrier for African Girls: No Toilet
best quote: In Guinea, enrollment rates for girls from 1997 to 2002 jumped 17 percent after improvements in school sanitation, according to a recent Unicef report. The dropout rate among girls fell by an even bigger percentage. Schools in northeastern Nigeria showed substantial gains after Unicef and donors built thousands of latrines, trained thousands of teachers and established school health clubs, the agency contends.
New York Times: A Not-So-Simple Plan To Keep African Girls In School
best quote: The question, of course, is what’s in it for Procter? A great deal, marketing experts say. For one, girls who use free pads today can turn into paying customers when they grow out of the school programs. They could persuade their mothers and aunts to use the products. “When you need to change a culture, it’s good strategy to start with the younger generation,” said Jill Avery, an assistant professor of marketing at the Simmons School of Management… Lisa Jones Christensen, an assistant professor at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, who is familiar with Procter’s philanthropy programs, says that Procter receives special treatment when its containers hit Kenya’s docks. “No one is saying, ‘Just unload the pads, leave the boxes of Tide,’ ” she said. “This program is giving P&G a license to operate in Africa for all its products.”
worst quote: Girls will not use [toilet] facilities that are situated in an isolated location because of the risk of rape or harassment. This problem of rape and harassment at school toilets has been mainly reported for the Southern part of Africa. In a Medical Research Council survey conducted in South African schools in 2000, over 30 percent of girls reported being raped at school.
Finally, I’d like to give an honourable mention to Grace, who is indeed a very nice woman, and inspired this post.
23 November 2007 at 11:36 am
Have you actually done any research before shouting out these wild accusations? If you had done so you would realise that the women of Zimbabwe (mainly from the ZCTU) actually asked ACTSA to fund a campaign to provide sanitary products for women in the country. These women used disposable sanitary products before the huge increases in inflation rates. So please don’t make out this admirable campaign out to be some kind of imperialist intervention. If you would like to do some research please go to http://www.actsa.org.
23 November 2007 at 12:28 pm
Yes but the minute a big company puts it’s name to anything we have ask questions…and if I know Maia she’s done a hell of a lot of research.
23 November 2007 at 9:15 pm
Anna –
I don’t think I am “shouting out wild accusations”, and I did do some research. Your suggestion that I did not, when it is completely obvious from my post that I did (because I have linked to and quoted from numerous sources) is a little hard to understand.
In answer to your points
(1) Yes I do realise that women in Zimbabwe asked ACTSA to help with the provision of sanitary products and that Bodyform came along later. I don’t think that changes the basic thrust of my post which is that (a) Bodyform / Always / Tampax are not in this out of the goodness of their hearts and (b) there are better solutions to the problem than handing out free disposable sanpro.
(2) Yes I do realise that some women in Zimbabwe (and elsewhere in Africa – this is not just about Zimbabwe) already used disposable products before the present economic crisis there, and before the various campaigns under scrutiny got underway. I don’t think this changes the basic thrust of my post. It only shows that a disposable sanpro market previously existed in Africa – albeit no doubt a fairly small one given the widespread poverty and traditional reliance on other methods of blood management. It does not show that there was a previous *need* for disposable sanpro, and it certainly does not show that disposable sanpro is the best solution to the problems under discussion.
(3) While I have no doubt that ACTSA is acting in good faith (the same does not go for Bodyform, or Always, or Tampax), I do not think this is an “admirable campaign” because as I explained in my post I think it is misguided. Whether or not you choose to describe what the sanpro companies are doing as “imperialist intervention” probably depends on what you understand by that term. I would probably favour “cynical exploitation” myself.
Finally, I’ve got to ask. Do you work for Bodyform?
Best wishes, and here’s to seeing the light
Maia x
PS Hey Erika – thanks 🙂
23 November 2007 at 9:27 pm
One more thing.
The ACTSA site contains (if you look really, really hard) the following:
ACTSA did initially consider reusable products such as mooncups and cotton washable pads when the Dignity! Period. campaign was first launched. However the economic problems in Zimbabwe mean that a large number of women have no access to clean water at all. Products like these need to be cleaned thoroughly which may not be possible in all cases and therefore it is essential to provide a disposable option, otherwise women run the risk of increased infections if they can’t clean reusable products properly. Also, many rural households will just have one pot in which they cook all their meals, so it would not be culturally appropriate for them to start using that to sterilise sanitary products.
Furthermore, products like this have never been readily available in Zimbabwe and women are not aware of them. The purpose of this campaign has been to restore women’s dignity by giving them back what has been taken from them; their basic right of access to sanitary products. Therefore we have chosen to provide products that have previously been used.
The cynic in me wonders whether it was before or after the involvement of Bodyform that ACTSA suddenly realised how impractical it would be to distribute reusable sanpro, although in fairness from what I can find out it does look as though Bodyform didn’t get *publicly* involved until about July 2007 whereas the campaign has been running since 2005.
I mean, cotton cloths for menstruation haven’t been widely available in Zimbabwe so that women are not aware of them? Give us credit for some intelligence, please. And the fact that women don’t have a spare pot to boil up a menstrual cup means you can’t distribute menstrual cups? You can’t distribute them with a little menstrual-cup sized pot? “Essential [for hygiene reasons] to have a disposable option”, when no method of hygienic disposal is actually available? Doesn’t sound to me like much real thinking went into this choice. Which suggests to the cynic that it was driven more by Bodyform’s (or maybe some other prospective “partner” company) potential involvement than by any genuine analysis.
27 November 2007 at 7:16 am
I found your blog just the other day because of your “Keeping it whole” post, and I’m back today because of this one.
I too posted about the Protecting Futures campaign about 2 weeks ago, and yesterday had Procter and Gamble, plus an advertising agency, plus a PR company all over my blog, within the same timespan and using the same search.
It may of course be coincidence, but I idly wondered if you had noticed the same? Of course you may not be the sad stats watcher that I am 🙂
27 November 2007 at 8:29 pm
A – thanks for your comment – and welcome.
My stats are not good enough to check, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to know that there are people whose job it is to search the net for negative comments about their company’s brands. I’ve seen it in several places where someone has used their blog to question what some big corporation is doing, or where a dubious product is being heavily marketed.
(For other readers, A’s fine post is here)
27 November 2007 at 10:35 pm
Ha, I just checked again and have 7 hit for “protecting futures tampax” today. Hmmm…
13 December 2007 at 5:40 pm
Maia
Interesting comments
Firstly, No i do not work for Bodyform – never have done and never will.
Secondly, I know that ACTSA decided not use reuseable products in 2005 after speaking with mooncup long before Bodyforms involvement. The main issue is that there is not clean water in many parts of Zimbabwe.
Thirdly, I think that a campaign which enables many girls and women in Zimbabwe to go to school and to work can and should be described as ‘admirable’.
You seem to agree to most of my points which begs the question what is the main point of your post?
Here’s to seeing the light!
Anna
14 December 2007 at 2:37 pm
Anna
Thanks for your comment. I’m curious, what is your involvement in the Bodyform/ACTSA campaign? I’m assuming you have or have had some personal involvement, since you seem to be privy to information not available to the general public.
In response to your actual question: the point of my post is quite clear, I think, both from the original post and from my first reply to you in which I say “the basic thrust of my post… is that (a) Bodyform / Always / Tampax are not in this out of the goodness of their hearts and (b) there are better solutions to the problem than handing out free disposable sanpro.”
Regards
20 February 2008 at 8:57 pm
[…] up on my previous post, Bleeding Over Africa, about campaigns to distribute disposable menstrual products for African girls and women, I wanted […]
21 March 2008 at 11:49 am
If you really want to help women/people in Africa, donate directly, time or money, to a cause. Always is praying on the fact that many tend to just want to feel good about themselves just by going about their own daily lives; no effort…be the change you wish to see in the world. There are other issues that are more important – FOR EXAMPLE, OVER 40% of THE WORLD’S COCOA…do you know where it comes from? The Ivory Coast in Africa where there are CHILD SLAVES who are stolen or sold or lured to do work, kept their by force, and suffer beatings continuously – this is literally modern day slavery, and it goes unchecked, AND EVERY TIME WE BUY CHOCOLATE, UNLESS IT IS CERTIFIED AS FAIR TRADE, WE ARE CONTRIBUTING TO THIS AND TELLING CHOCOLATE COMPANIES THAT IT IS OKAY. PLEASE go to http://www.slaverysucks.org to educate yourself, spread the word, and stop buying chocolate from major chocolate companies who have the power, but not the desire, to change this disgusting practice that we, by the power of our vote in purchases, contribute to. Please, take a second to discover what you never knew, and what you have the power to change.
PS ALWAYS question the motives of a huge corporation advertising about the good they are doing. For example, Roots, the GAP, etc. all have clothing lines now, like the RED Line, that bring our attention to world issues. But where do the rest of their clothes come from? That’s right, sweatshops – they are willing to do the bare minimum just so they can pull the wool over consumers eyes, so that ppl can continue to buy name brand clothes and feel great about themselves as they wear it for everyone to see. We as consumers are falling for this, but we really need to do is look at their motives, and the big picture. Don’t kid yourselves – they are doing this for the good of their company, nothing else. If it wasn’t good for their company in some way, they would nto be doing it. Money first. Sure, they’re bringing attention to the issue, but I think that their intent is certainly important to consider.
10 March 2009 at 7:59 pm
[…] promoting formula in Africa to the extreme detriment of both mothers and babies, now we have both SCA and Proctor & Gamble trying to promote disposable sanitary products in Africa. Any guesses as to how that’s going to turn […]