To fight against deforestation, let’s end the (menstrual) cycle of girls dropping out of school!

Have you already asked yourself if and how menstrual hygiene materials impact deforestation?

No, I am not talking about pollution. Think again.

No?

Here is a hint: the role of women is fundamental to the preservation of forests, but it is hampered by gender inequalities and mainly by the lack of education for girls.

Eventually, this situation leads to systemic issues that can make whole communities suffer. Empowering women is beneficial for everybody, and it starts with supporting girls going to school.

However, all over the world, but particularly in developing countries, girls miss school due to their periods.

There is an urgent need for sanitary pads and better menstrual hygiene management …

According to UNESCO, puberty is surrounded by cultural pressure (e.g. starting a family) and structural taboos which impact the learning experience of teenagers. More precisely, the absence of a safe and clean educational setting and the insufficient promotion of healthy practices disproportionally impact girls.

Indeed, gender discrimination is everywhere, and even more… in the toilets! UNESCO acknowledges that there are four essential elements needed to ensure that the educational experience of teenage girls is not unfairly affected by puberty: access to menstrual hygiene material, latrines and places to change, safe water and sanitation, and good hygiene practices. Unfortunately, often the school environment does not provide those facilities. The direct consequence is that, according to UNICEF, 1 in 10 African girls “do not attend school during menstruation.” This estimate can also be aggravated by the influence of the family on girls, which encourages girls to stay at home and learn how to maintain a household in order to marry them off quickly. Moreover, UNESCO states that “parents and girls become increasingly fearful of potential sexual harassment by boys and male teachers at school” and “parents may withdraw girls from schools to avoid pregnancies resulting from consensual or non-consensual sex.” Who would want to go to school in these conditions?

… but water is also an issue to girls’ schooling…

According to the United Nations, 2.4 billion people lack access to safe water and sanitation. This means that 40 percent of the world practices open defecation or lacks adequate sanitation facilities. Moreover, at least 1.8 billion people globally use a source of drinking water that is fecally contaminated. This obviously has a direct impact on humanitarian assistance and public health: each day about 1,000 children die due to preventable water and sanitation-related diarrheal diseases.

This lack of access to clean water often means a lack of sanitation, and therefore a lack of privacy and safety. This particularly impacts girls and women, as school toilets are often shared by boys and girls as well as male and female teachers. Even if girls did have access to sanitary pads, the lack of access to private and clean toilets to change and clean themselves cause high absentee rates among female students during menstruation and even school drop outs.

Water is even more important! Access to clean water at home enables the girls to not spend time on the water chores and have time to go to school and focus in class.

…however, Kenya takes the lead on sanitary health to keep its girls in school...

According to UNESCO, approximatively 2.6 million girls in Kenya do not have basic menstrual hygiene material, and particularly girls living in low-income communities like indigenous communities. Therefore, starting at puberty, Kenyan school girls are more than twice as likely to drop out of school than boys. Megan White Mukuria, founder of ZanaAfrica Foundation explains that these girls are forced to craft themselves sanitary pads using unhygienic materials like “chicken feathers, cheap mattresses and newspapers.” Often, girls have to choose between selling their bodies to buy pads or stay at home without having the chance to pursue their education. Sanitary pads should be a basic human right!

Acknowledging that schools are an ideal environment for addressing gender inequalities, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Kenya launched the National Sanitary Towels Programme in 2010. This project not only aimed at providing free sanitary towels to school girls – thanks to a $3 million per year budget - but also trained teachers in hygienic and healthy practices. Moreover , Kenya withdrew its tax on menstrual hygienic products – the Pink tax - in 2004 to lower their price and make them available to as many girls and women as possible.

Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go to obtain gender equality in toilets. The next challenges for Kenya are to further reduce the cost of sanitary pads and to implement better policies and practices around puberty education and menstrual hygiene management (MHM as defined by UNESCO).

But… what is the link to deforestation?

Women’s empowerment is the future of Kenya, especially for the indigenous communities living in or depending on the forests. Indeed, women are traditionally farmers in Africa and Wangari Mathai, a 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner created the Green Belt Movement (GBM) in order to teach women to plant trees and take care of them. She developed the Gender Livelihood and Advocacy program to work with communities and involve women in the decision-making process in order to promote gender equality. GBM acknowledges that “gender inequality is a major obstacle to socio-economic and political development and is one of the underlying causes of low productivity as it does, among other things, hamper the participation of at least half of the country’s population.” Therefore, Kenya has seen more and more school projects develop during the past few years to teach students how to nurture and protect the environment. The Kiserian primary school near Nairobi has planted more than 2000 trees since the beginning of its environment club and this same school has a Facebook group called “let’s change the face of Kiserian primary school toilets!”

So, now you know how periods impact deforestation!

To conclude, Kenya is way ahead of France or the US regarding progressive menstrual policies. Especially when it comes to understanding that pads and tampons shouldn't be taxed.

Also, mark your calendars: 28 May is Menstrual Hygiene Day, yay!

What can YOU do?

Donate or get involved at:

• Zana Africa: www.zanaafrica.org/

• WASH united: http://wash-united.org

• Sign the petition and stand with Eva! https://www.one.org/us/take-action/stand-with-eva/?source=otherYouTube

• Support Begirl’s Empowerbank program here: http://www.empowerbank.orgor here: https://www.begirl.org/products/sponsor-a-girl

• BRAC: http://www.bracusa.org

• WATER.org: http://water.org/#

• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: www.gatesfoundation.org