Women’s Agentic Role in Enabling and Dismantling Menstrual Health Taboos in Northern India: A Culture-Centered Approach

ABSTRACT

Communication about menstrual health continues to be influenced by institutional and social practices which deem it to be unclean and impure. In a country such as India, several customs and traditions reinforce secrecy and shame about menstruation. As such, scholars advocate the need to generate knowledge that can open opportunities to converse on the topic of menstruation and understand issues related to bodily changes. Using a culture-centered approach, this study examined how college-going adult women from two cities in Northern India made sense of menstrual health. Data collection included 20 focus groups with 180 college-going women and interviews with 16 female family members. Participants discussed communication patterns surrounding menstrual health and how they uphold, challenge, and change social practices. Specifically, participants reflected on how they were communicated to about their menstrual health with underpinnings of secrecy and shame and how the influence of current opportunities for openness encourage them to anticipate positive change. Theoretical and practical implications for studying communication around menstruation in diverse cultural contexts are discussed.

Notes

1. We note and honor the movement for inclusivity of people who menstruate in understanding taboos of menstrual health (Bobel, 2019). However, the regions where the data was collected did not allow for exploring transmen’s menstrual experiences. We address this in the section on future work and limitations.

2. Caste is a birth-based system of social hierarchy in which individuals of the general class are afforded an elevated social status; those individuals who are beyond the five groups that represent the general class are referred to as the scheduled caste. Historically members of the scheduled caste have been subservient to members of the general caste.

3. The (Sabrimala) temple is dedicated to Lord Ayyappa, a Hindu god who devotees believe is celibate and cannot have contact with women of menstruating age. Some believe that’s because such women are impure. Others believe it’s because they are of childbearing age – fertile and thus a temptation to Lord Ayyappa[…] In September, India’s Supreme Court ruled that Sabarimala’s age restrictions on women amount to gender discrimination – NPR, December 22, 2018.

4. Pickles in India are created by drying raw mangoes and marinating them in oil and Indian spices over a month. The same procedure is applied to create any other pickled vegetables. This labor-intensive process is done by women in the families during the summer and the resulting item, referred to as a pickle, is eaten with food for the rest of the year. Often during summers, as pickle jars are not refrigerated, they can get infected with fungus. However, there is a cultural myth that if women touch the pickle jar during their menstrual cycle, they can cause the fungus to develop and spoil the jar.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Global Synergy Grant, College of Liberal Arts, Purdue University [n/a].