JOIN USVaishali Rawat’s field of work is nature research and wildlife conservation, which means extended periods in remote forests.
There was nowhere she could throw the menstrual waste, during her menstrual cycle, especially when most people in her camps were men. She needed an alternative way to manage periods. She had heard about menstrual cups but was not sure if she could make the switch because of apprehensions associated with cups.
However after realising that she was struggling to keep a stock of disposable menstrual products while on the go, she decided to go for a menstrual cup.
“I think I had briefly read about menstrual cups in my 12th grade biology textbook; there was just a line about it and nothing was elaborated. It was then on Facebook that I got to know about it in detail,” recalls Rawat. “The first time I started looking at all menstrual products, I saw tampons and started using them. I was always keen on buying menstrual cups but I postponed it by a year because my mother was grossed out by tampons, so cups were a long shot,” she adds. Now a happy user of menstrual cup, she says that these are eco-friendly and cheaper in comparison to other products.
Despite these advantages, menstrual cups are yet to become popular, according to Ashish Malani, who launched Shecup in 2010, because it is not a profitable product and there isn’t much awareness about menstrual products in India. Malani says, “Menstrual cups have been around for a long time. No multinational company that produces disposable pads and tampons produces menstrual cups.
As it never became a retail product, it does not sell well and is not a money generating business.”
In fact, if you sell a menstrual cup, you end up losing a monthly customer because of its reusability, Malani explains. Those selling the menstrual cups also do not have the money and time like the MNCs to market the cups like disposable pads are marketed, he adds.
He further explains how there is a lot of stigma attached with menstrual cups, which is a hurdle in the promotion of cups. “It is an internally applicable product and any product that endangers the hymen is an issue in our society. This is also one of the major reasons why people do not want to adopt cups. Even though they are medically tested and are very safe to use, societal norms come in the way of this product,” he says.
For instance, Priyanka Singh, assistant director, candidly admits that she is scared of menstrual management products that need to be inserted. “It took me a long time to switch from sanitary pads to tampons. The use of menstrual cup can be very messy as well. It will take me a long time to start using menstrual cups,” she says.
But Sinu Joseph, a menstrual hygiene educator, feels that if we as individuals prefer using a particular product, we expect all women to use the same, and find it very difficult to see things from others’ perspective.
“For example, I use the menstrual cup when I am at home and it is easy to wash and sanitise it. But I would not recommend the same to a rural woman. Most girls and women in villages do a lot of physical work with their hands — tilling the land, sowing seeds, harvesting crops, milking and bathing cattle, clearing dung, feeding animals, etc. As a result their hands are not the most clean,” Joseph says. “With a product like a menstrual cup which requires insertion of the product into the vagina using hands, it is necessary that high level of hand hygiene and cleanliness is maintained. The practicality of rural women paying attention to hand hygiene in the midst of all the work they do is to be seriously considered, before promoting such products.”
At the same time, there are educators who are facing different challenges in rural areas. Pulkeet Mehra, from a non-profit organisation, Rationalism, Secularism, and Transparency Foundation, that promotes menstrual health awareness, faces several challenges while advocating the usage of menstrual cups in rural villages in Haryana.
“The administrators and a biology teacher of a government school objected to our menstrual hygiene awareness where we discussed menstrual cups as an eco-friendly alternative, along with other traditional methods,” says Mehra. “The teacher claimed this knowledge should not be imparted to children of a lower socio-economic background as it has a corrupting influence, and should only be taught in private schools. I believe such attitudes, especially from educators need to change,” he added.
Surrounded by these varying debates, personal concerns and up against multinational companies, menstrual cups are slowly but steadily finding market through word of mouth and internet blogs.