When visiting developing nations as CEO of Procter & Gamble, colleagues and I often discovered that the people we met lacked the opportunity to reach their full potential. In many cases, that would be due to a lack of adequate education and a lack of access to quality health care.
In some countries, we discovered that many people didn’t understand menstruation and puberty in girls. As it turns out, they were hardly alone. A report by P&G and WASH United found that period shame, taboos and misinformation prevail worldwide.
My wife and I witnessed this once when visiting a Hindu temple in Bali. A sign read, “If you’re a woman that’s menstruating, you’re not allowed in the temple.”
Historically, beliefs existed in the Christian Bible or Jewish Torah about a lack of cleanliness during menstruation. Many of those customs probably made sense at the time they were created. But they don’t make sense today, and they limit opportunities for women and girls.
In fact, history and culture is the greatest barrier to more collaboration to improve women’s health in general and “period poverty” in particular. It’s hard to tell someone who has believed something for their entire life or whose family has adhered to a practice for generations that their tradition is no longer relevant. I am not criticizing them and their societies, but traditions may stand in the way of the greater development of their people.
Of course, traditions often are difficult to overcome. That’s why Procter & Gamble teaches about puberty and menstruation when our employees enter some nations’ communities. We have reached more than 15 million people worldwide in that education. (We also provide menstrual products to women and girls without access to them.)
Learning about menstruation is important for many reasons but mainly for the realities of period poverty. In Nigeria, we found that middle school girls were dropping out of school. Having reached puberty, they didn’t want the embarrassment of going to class while menstruating. They would stay out of school for a week every month. It doesn’t take long to drop out when you stay at home for a week each month.
Teaching about menstruation and distributing menstrual products is philanthropy or good business. My answer is it’s both. You can’t separate philanthropy from good business practice.
It’s philanthropy because it’s the right thing to do for girls, to allow them to be educated, escape the realities of period poverty, and become full contributors to their societies. But it’s also good business practice. Those young girls eventually become members of the economy by gaining an education.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think it is the role of a multinational company or a government to change the mores of a society or to impose Western values on the rest of the world. But when a society is ready to change those mores, our role is to help them change and show them how to do it safely and appropriately. That includes learning about menstruation, removing the stigma around periods, and improving puberty education.
Of course, period poverty is a reality in the United States, too. P&G found in a survey that almost 20 percent of U.S. girls have missed school because they lack access to period products. For that reason, P&G recently donated more than 30 million period products in the United States.
That said, I am not in favor of making menstrual products free, like Scotland is doing, or making the products tax-free, as CVS is doing in some states. You retard innovation by taking the production and distribution of menstruation products out of the private sector.
If you start providing or subsidizing products via the government, you won’t have innovation. For one thing, there is no profit motive in government, so it can’t move as fast as a business in creating something new.
But I am encouraged that overcoming period poverty is a bipartisan concern. Democrats and Republicans have supported the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues’ championing of this cause.
Addressing period poverty and eliminating the taboos around menstruation is an important way to expand access to health care for women. As that happens, more people in more countries will have opportunities to reach their full potential.