posted on 2018-02-12, 15:11authored byMimi Coultas, Jane Martin, Cathy Stephen, Siobhan Warrington
Menstruation is a fact of life for 2 billion women and girls of reproductive age and yet in many places girls face serious barriers to managing their periods. These barriers impact on their rights to education, health, dignity and participation in society. Plan International is implementing menstrual hygiene management activities in 12 countries across Africa and Asia. In 2016, Plan International contracted Oral Testimony Works and Creative Social Change to conduct formative research in Bangladesh on menstrual hygiene management, using human centred design and other participatory methods. This paper presents some of the primary participatory research findings: on practice, motivators and barriers to managing menstruation safely, privately and hygienically. The paper also includes some of the programme recommendations and suggested approaches for Plan International to use in the re-design and implementation of current and future menstrual hygiene management work in Bangladesh.
History
School
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Research Unit
Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)
Published in
WEDC Conference
Citation
COULTAS, M. ... et al, 2017. Moving forward: findings from menstrual hygiene management formative research in Bangladesh. IN: Shaw, R.J. (ed). Local action with international cooperation to improve and sustain water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services: Proceedings of the 40th WEDC International Conference, Loughborough, UK, 24-28 July 2017, Paper 2783, 7pp.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/