In sub-Saharan Africa, the school attendance rate is among the lowest in the world--only six in ten eligible children make it as far as primary school, and many factors, including sexual harassment by male teachers and pressure from families to become caregivers at a young age, play a role, the biggest factor may be the onset of menstruation. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), more than one in ten school-age girls either skips school when she is menstruating or drops out entirely.
One reason is a lack of clean water and private, functioning latrines. UNICEF is making efforts to build latrines and bring clean water to Africa's schools, but most still lack such basic facilities. And even when latrines are built, the New York Times reports, "toilets for boys and girls must be clearly separate and students who may have never seen a latrine must be taught the importance of using one. And the toilets must be kept clean, a task that frequently falls to the very schoolgirls who were supposed to benefit most."
A lack of sanitary pads may be an even bigger barrier. In Zimbabwe, for example, pads cost half again as much as the the average person makes in a month. As a result, many girls and women make do with newspaper, rags, or camel skin--strategies that often fail, causing considerable embarrassment. Companies such as Proctor & Gamble, which owns the Always and Tampax sanitary-pad and tampon brands, have stepped in to fill the gap, providing free sanitary products and "hygiene and puberty education" across the continent. They're also building toilets in some locations, although the lack of toilets is a huge problem that extends throughout Africa.
Whatever its good intentions (and less altruistic PR motivations), the P&G campaign doesn't solve the endemic problems (a lack of sanitary supplies that are affordable locally; a lack of water and toilet facilities.) That's made it controversial among some women's advocates in the US and elsewhere, who say that providing pads to girls and women merely exports the West's culture of overconsumption and gets girls hooked on using disposable products they can't afford. (Some of these critics, of course, are hawking more sustainable, but less affordable, products of their own). Others have raised objections to the "corporate" nature of the campaign, arguing that self-interested corporations can't be expected to put the interests of impoverished African girls before their own.
Those criticisms are fair enough, but it seems to me they miss the real story. Right now, thousands of girls are being forced to choose between humiliation and health risks at school or a lifetime of poverty, illiteracy, and diminished choices. Yes, in an ideal world, it would be better for women to rely on local sources for sanitation and toilet facilities. In an ideal world, it would be better for women to use sanitary napkins made of local materials that could be reused. In an ideal world, there would be no stigma associated with menstruation in Africa, and girls wouldn't have to hide in shame when they hit puberty. But at the moment, campaigns to hand out free, Western-made sanitary supplies and build toilets and water pipes with Western money offer girls opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have had--to finish school, learn to read, and maybe live better lives than those of their parents. With those opportunities, perhaps they can design sustainable, local systems to help girls get through school without the involvement of Western corporations like Proctor & Gamble. But raising awareness, eliminating stigmas, and providing desperately needed supplies isn't a bad start.
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