Menstruating girls quitting school

…school hygiene facilities, tax rebate on pads can be game-changer

Geographically, Ga South District in the Greater Accra Region, Zabzugu District in the Northern Region and North Dayi District in the Volta Region are several kilometres apart but the effects of menstruation on school girls in these locations are as closely knit as the leaves of a book.

This is how: in all the districts, menstruating girls become isolated from their families, school and the public. At household and community levels, this happens chiefly because of cultural beliefs.

At the school level, it is more than just culture. The lack, or inadequacy, of appropriate Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities as well as sanitary pads in schools is also culpable.

This model toilet is the type authorities want to build to save girls’ education (PHOTO: Frederick Asiamah)

According to Awo Aidam Amenyah, Executive Director for the non-governmental organisation J INITIATIVE (JI), even in very urban Accra such as locations in the Ga South municipality, “the girls cannot afford five cedis (GHC5.00) worth of sanitary pads a month; and some of them are heavy bleeders so they use more than one.

“So, they resort to going to boys to get the money and after they are done with the menstruation, the boys sleep with them,” Ms Amenyah told this reporter on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2016, which was marked on Tuesday, March 8 under the theme: “Pledge for Parity.”

The JI, which runs the Happy School Girl Project, opines that men, women, boys and girls in Ghana can pledge to take concrete steps to accelerate gender parity, but it must start with education.

This is because the NGO has discovered that the period of menstruation is usually a big hurdle that girls must scale if they want to go to school. “I cannot give you figures for now until we are through with a study we will undertake but then it’s a big issue,” Ms Amenyah said.

But the JI sourced Unicef to say that one out of ten girls in Africa misses school or drops out during menstruation due to the lack of sanitary facilities.

In the meantime, Ms Amenyah says JI has six demands; chiefly among them is demand for tax rebate on menstrual products. “We were requesting for tax rebate on menstrual products because the tax element is also affecting the pricing. You know we don’t have a manufacturing point in Ghana so it’s all China-imported…and the tax will be transferred unto the price of the product.”

The JI also demands that schools are equipped with soap, sanitary pads and medication for pain during menstruation.

That demand ties in with recommendations from a team of researchers that worked in the Northern and Volta regions.

The Zabzugu and Dayi cases

In January, some preliminary details emerged from a study conducted in Zabzugu and North Dayi districts as part of a Unicef-led Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Schools for Girls (WinS4Girls) programme.

In sum, the study showed that girls were increasingly finding it difficult to attend school when they were menstruating.   

“The general understanding at the household/community level is that menstruation is not a normal thing and [so] should be treated differently. So, household members limit their interaction with menstruating girls,” Osman Alhassan, Lecturer, University of Ghana told a gathering comprising representatives of ministries, departments and agencies, development partners (DPs), civil society organizations/non-governmental organizations (CSOs/NGOs), the media, the academia and students.

The gathering, dubbed the fifty-fourth National Level Learning Alliance Platform (NLLAP 54), took place in Accra under the joint auspices of Unicef Ghana, the School Health Education Programme of the Ghana Education Service (GES/SHEP) and the Resource Centre Network (RCN). The organisers called the meeting to discuss “Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM).”

 Osman Alhassan, Lecturer, University of Ghana, 

says menstruation is stopping many girls from going to school 

(PHOTO: RCN)

In 2004, the UNICEF and World Health Organisation, (WHO) wrote that Menstrual Management is “Women and adolescent girls using a clean menstrual management material to absorb or collect blood that can be changed in privacy as often as necessary for the duration of the menstruation period, using soap and water for washing the body as required, and having access to facilities to dispose of used menstrual management materials.”

Menstrual management is recognized within the context of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Human Rights to Water and Sanitation.

Expatiating on the study conducted in Zabzugu and North Dayi districts, Alhassan revealed that the team of researchers observed “A general sense of (the person menstruating) being contaminated and should be restricted in movement and contacts.”

He continued that “In some communities menstruating girls are relieved of their normal routines and may be isolated or confined (in a particular room or hut).”

To compound the problem, “The lack of support in schools (changing rooms, toilets, running water, supply of sanitary pads, etc.) makes girls stay at home during menstruation” and “Longer distances from homes to schools is also influencing girls’ attitudes to absent themselves from school during menstruation.”

In the study, which was conducted to, among others, obtain a better understanding of school girls’ experiences and behaviours during menstruation, researchers compared rural and urban settlements. They also pitched schools with WASH facilities against others without WASH facilities, selecting three apiece in each district to arrive at a total of 12 schools.

The researchers also used purposive sampling of pupils in Junior High School “since it formed the middle cohort where many girls had experienced menstruation.”

Respondents included school girls, teachers (SHEP Coordinators), school boys, fathers, mothers, opinion leaders, traditional leaders, religious leaders, district education administrators, district administrators, and health workers.

Earlier studies conducted by WaterAid in 2012, for example, show that as a result of menstruation, 95% of girls in Ghana sometimes miss school days. The study further reveals that in the country, 48% – 59% of girls in urban areas and about 90% of girls in peri-urban/rural areas felt shame during the menstrual period. 

Montgomery and others, who researched Sanitary Pad Interventions for Girls’ Education in Ghana in 2012, reported that girls miss up to five days a month of school days due to inadequate sanitation facilities, lack of sanitary products at school and feeling of discomfort, such as cramps.

Since such conditions further put girls in a disadvantaged position, the Government of Ghana (GoG) in partnership with UNICEF Ghana has been implementing the WinS4Girls programme to improve educational outcomes. The two-year project, which is located in the North Dayi District of the Volta Region and the Zabzugu District of the Northern Region, spans November 2014 to September 2016.

“Menstrual Hygiene Management is a global emerging issue,” says Mr. Charles Nachinab, WASH Officer at Unicef.

This story was also published in the Monday March 14, 2016 edition of the Public Agenda.