Change is finally happening in India—a country that has been notoriously plagued with societal norms that are harmful to women on the basis of sexist cultural beliefs.
In March of 2021, the Gujarat High Court released a proposal to forbid the exclusion of women on their menstrual cycle at all places statewide—whether they be private, public, religious, or educational. This proposal is directly related to an incident that occurred earlier in the year involving over 60 girls in their dorms at Shree Sahjanand Girls Institute, an undergraduate school with a majority of girls in their mid to late teenage years. When the dorm’s resident assistant (or hostel rector, as they’re called there) complained to the principal that some girls were violating religious Hindu rules regarding women on their menstrual cycle, 68 girls were taken to a large restroom and forced to strip and remove their undergarments—all to prove they weren’t menstruating.
The Gujarat High Court then moved to ban these exclusionary practices that are set in place. They claimed that many of these restrictions that specifically harm and segregate women is solely based on the fact that they menstruate. They further said that these restrictions and myths regarding menstruation are based on sexist cultural beliefs that the menstrual cycle is “impure”, “shameful”, “dirty”, and “dangerous if exposed to it”.
Because of these societal norms, menstruating women in India have been banned from their puja room in their Hindu temples, as well as the kitchen because they’re believed to be too dirty to prepare and handle food (which could supposedly “get contaminated” from their menstruation). Menstruating women also can’t offer prayers or touch holy books.
These sexist cultural and religious beliefs not only cause the segregation of men and women in India but it’s also created a taboo that prevents communities from talking about menstruation. Because it’s an “unspoken” topic, these harmful beliefs have been able to become so impactful and cause such action. These taboos are not only false but also hurt women’s mental and emotional states. Girls will often feel isolated in their experiences of menstruation and will feel too ashamed to discuss it with anyone else. Even worse, due to a lack of health and sex education, these women remain uninformed on their own body and their functions throughout their life, and they’re forced to conform with the ideals society pushes onto them. Mothers even refrain from talking about these topics with their daughters because of this negative stigma.
The justices in court even wrote, “Menstruation has been stigmatized in our society. This has built up due to the traditional beliefs in the impurity of menstruating women and our unwillingness to discuss it normally.” India has been awaiting this first step for a long time, and now that it’s happened—it’s essential that the pace of this fight to end gender discrimination doesn’t slow down.