Menstruation practices and imaginaries (Zambia)

The water, sanitation and hygiene sector initiated menstrual hygiene management (MHM) projects in schools to empower women, but this intervention has been critiqued from feminist and political ecological approaches. These critiques have highlighted how MHM can reinforce imaginaries of superiority and “civilization”, and that inequities cannot be solved by technological fixes, such as the distribution of sanitary pads, but efforts have to be put in place to encounter other roots of gender inequalities and disparities. This study contributes to this critical literature. The general aim of this research was to document expectations and experiences of menarche and menstruation among adolescent girls in George and Chawama, two informal compounds in Lusaka, Zambia. This was accomplished through photo voice workshops. The study revealed that there is diversity of physical feelings and events surrounding the monthly periods of different girls. For the girls, menstruation is more than pads, pains and stains but a moment to become a woman, to be part of a group, to bond with mothers by receiving teachings, gifts, love and care; a moment to imagine or start romantic relations and to dream about the future. In both compounds, MHM projects only materialise in the form of free pads and although the girls are told in their households about adulthood and about managing monthly periods, there is limited biological knowledge of menstruation and the processes it entails. Furthermore, it was shown that these MHM projects lack sustainability approaches, subsequently after the life span of projects infrastructure decays and there are not enough funds to maintain it.