Text: Sister Shan, young film critic, screenwriter, and director
80% of India’s 600 million women cannot afford sanitary napkins
Menstrual discrimination has become a serious social problem
Until the advent of cheap sanitary napkin making machines
Started a menstrual revolution that changed the country
When it comes to luxury goods, we always think of luxury cars, jewelry, cosmetics and perfumes... Nowadays, more and more people own luxury goods, and ordinary office girls can afford Chanel, Lancome and Lancome. Dior.
However, when we are talking about these luxury goods, no one can think that in neighbouring India, the definition of luxury by girls is just: a sanitary napkin.
At this year’s Oscars, a short film that was not outstanding from technology to picture quality won the Best Documentary Short Film Award at one fell swoop, just because it aimed the camera at the sanitary napkin of an Indian girl.
Indians who dare not talk about menstruation
In India in 2018, when a modern tractor drove over a smooth country road, the girls in the Harpur District were reluctant to even mention the word menstruation.
In the face of reporters' questions, some of them covered their faces and looked ashamed.
Some are serious, pretending to be serious.
The translator will also try to avoid these two words and replace them with "changes in the woman's body".
The students in the school who are receiving the latest knowledge face such a question, they only say "this is a woman's problem", and then they can't speak anything.
So in the eyes of these Indians, what is menstruation?
The young woman said, I only know that when menstruation is coming, I can have a baby.
The older women said that this is a question that only God can answer, and that all women shed during menstruation are bad blood.
As we all know, the status of women in India is very low. It is absolutely a luxury for girls to go to school, so their ignorance is justified.
What about men? They should know better.
Unfortunately, the results of the interview were disappointing. In the eyes of these boys, menstruation is a disease.
In India, menstruating women choose to be silent. Daughters never talk to mothers, wives never talk to husbands, and even the best girlfriends never talk about it.
It is hard to imagine that in a country with rapid economic development, talking about menstruation has become the biggest taboo in this country.
In Indian tradition, women's menstruation is regarded as a bad omen.
Girls are not allowed to enter the temple during menstruation, and they are not allowed to pray to any gods.
Wives will automatically draw a line with their husbands. They can't even touch kimchi, because menstrual hands will make them "degenerate."
In addition to the need to keep away from their families, women who have menstruation cannot enter and leave in public. In some remote and backward areas, girls will be driven to cowsheds or mountains until the end of their menstruation.
An adolescent girl was driven out of the house and wandered alone. Her personal safety is not guaranteed. Therefore, such bad habits also condone rape to a certain extent.
Not every school prepares toilets for girls. Once a girl has menstruation, she needs to go to a long distance to change cloth strips, and every time she goes to change cloth strips, there are many men wandering around. Under such difficult circumstances , She simply dropped out of school.
Speaking of this, I have to mention the Indian toilet culture that has been criticized. In our perception, the toilet is a private space, but in the eyes of Indians, the entire land of India is a toilet.
Many toilets in India are open. They think that going to the toilet is a time for close contact with nature, and the toilet is a dirty thing and should not appear at home.
In the film "Toilet Heroes", the originally loving newlyweds often quarrel about the toilet. His wife Jaya was born in a family of upper caste. She has superior living conditions and is not accustomed to living without toilets, but every time she mentions thinking When I asked my husband to build a toilet for himself, his reaction was "Your brain is broken."
Men can go to the toilet generously in such an environment, but women can only go to the toilet together until dark.
Women can drink less or no water, and wait until dark to form a team to go to the bathroom, but menstruation is not so easy to manage. Once menstruation comes, many female students will take a one-week absence from school, even as in a documentary. Of girls just drop out of school like that.
Because of the discrimination against menstruation, menstruating women in India should not imagine brown sugar ginger water and warm babies. A piece of ordinary sanitary napkins is unimaginable for them.
Many Indian women use such things as dirty cloth, leaves, old newspapers, and even dust during menstruation. Over time, the chances of getting sick become higher and higher, such as gynecological inflammation, infertility, and some people even suffer from it. Die.
Sanitary napkins turned out to be a luxury
In 2018, the Times of India had such a shocking news. The results of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) showed that up to 62% of women aged 15 to 24 in India still choose to use fabrics during their regular holidays.
There are approximately 600 million women in India, but 80% of women cannot afford sanitary napkins. The main reason for not being able to use it is the high price of sanitary napkins.
In the movie "Partners in India", when Laxmi, who loves his wife, saw that his wife was using a dirty cloth when he was menstruating, he decided to buy sanitary napkins for his wife by himself.
As a result, when I walked to the store, I found that the price of a pack of sanitary napkins was equivalent to one month's living expenses for their family. The wife was very angry when she knew that her husband had bought a pack of sanitary napkins at a high price and refused to use it.
Therefore, in India, sanitary napkins are really luxury items.
In "Lunar Revolution", when the reporter mentioned sanitary napkins, no one had used them.
Some people have heard of sanitary napkins on TV and stories, but they cannot afford it.
What's more, this lady has never heard of the three words sanitary napkins.
Even if the reporter took out the sanitary napkins and gave them to them, no one would use them.
The Indian government has also made a lot of efforts to this end, but the results have been minimal, because in this ancient country, reform is not something that can be solved by a decree or a measure.
Take the toilet movement in India as an example. The Indian government and local governments have funded to encourage everyone to build toilets, but few people are still willing to act. For this reason, a gang in northern India has issued a strict order: all civil servants in this state must Everyone took a selfie with their own toilet or sitting on the toilet and sent it to the government. The person who sent this selfie can receive the next month’s salary. I’m sorry if you don’t post this selfie, it means that you have not fulfilled the government’s proposal. The obligation of the toilet, the salary will be deducted next month, the difficulty of reform can be imagined.
Indian women who make their own sanitary napkins
However, the world is unpredictable. Suddenly, one day, Indian women ushered in a man who could change their destiny-Arunachadam.
He is known as the uncle of India and the inventor of the cheap sanitary napkin machine.
A small sanitary napkin making machine allowed Arunachadam to win the National Creative Award personally presented by the President of India, and was selected as Time Magazine's 100 Influential People of the Year. He also gave a speech on the same stage with Bill Gates.
Arunachadam is exactly the prototype of Lakshmi, the male protagonist in the movie "Partners in India". The original intention of inventing the cheap sanitary napkin machine also stems from his being an out-and-out spoiler.
Because of the development of sanitary napkins, Arunachadam became a vampire and shameless weird in the eyes of the villagers, so his wife and mother left her.
But since ancient times, adversity has emerged as a hero. This welder who dropped out of school at the age of 14 and can’t even read the word, just relied on his tenacity to check information, do experiments, and live alone for 5 years to develop a low-cost, easy-to-operate sanitary napkin. Manufacturing machine.
He gave up applying for a patent and donated the machine free of charge to impoverished areas.
In the documentary, we are fortunate to see such a group of women who have been transformed by the sanitary napkin machine.
Arunachadam teaches everyone how to use the machine and demonstrate how to make a qualified sanitary napkin.
The women saw such a machine as if they had enjoyed a magic show.
These women started to work, from nine to five. Soon, they produced nearly 20,000 sanitary napkins.
They set the brand of sanitary napkins as "flying", which means that every woman can be free.
With the help of similar local women's federations, they started selling, but the difficulty of selling is not less than the difficulty of production, and it is still difficult to make progress.
The store is reluctant to sell sanitary napkins.
With men on the street, women can only wait and see from afar, and it is difficult to buy a box of sanitary napkins for themselves.
However, they did not give up, and still promoted their own sanitary napkins.
At a party with only women, a woman finally bought the first sanitary napkin in her life shyly.
Indian women put on the wings of freedom
What can a small sanitary napkin change?
Menstrual hygiene? Gynecological disease? Freedom of movement? It's much more than that.
They will usher in a new era like the little-footed women who were lifted in ancient China.
The girl who dropped out of school because of her menstruation earned her husband's respect because she earned money. She said that it feels good to be respected by her husband.
An older sister who had never bought a gift for her brother finally gave her a suit, which made her very proud.
Sineha passed the physical fitness test of the police station and used the money she earned from selling sanitary napkins to apply for a training course for the Delhi police. Being a policeman has always been her dream, and now she finally has the opportunity to receive formal training.
Before that, the whole village thought she was crazy.
More and more women are using such cheap sanitary napkins. Some girls wrote to Arunachadam saying that she was finally able to go to school again.
At the end of the documentary, men began to voluntarily participate in the production of sanitary napkins.
In this menstrual revolution, countless women have benefited from it and changed their lives. Stars including Amir Khan have also responded to this revolution.
In the end, the Indian government also responded by abolishing the previous 12% import tariff on sanitary napkins. This is a great moment. It is important to know that before this, many Indian women shamelessly spent their entire lives without using sanitary napkins.
We believe that this small piece of sanitary napkin has changed not only the destiny of Indian women, but also the entire country!
Text / Sister Shan
The picture comes from the Internet, please contact to delete if there is any infringement
The above content is from "The Bund" (WeChat ID: the-bund)
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