-Essay-
CAIRO — On a morning that repeats every month, I wake up to a pain that increases hour by hour, accompanied by a crying spell. I master the art of resistance by immersing myself in my daily tasks. I take painkillers and wear dark clothes, going to work without anyone noticing what I’m going through.
These are my daily struggles during my period; those days when I wish the earth would swallow me up so no one could see me. I endure the pain, my facial features change, my chest swells, and I suffer from nausea that takes away my appetite. And I am not alone.
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In a 2016 YouGov survey of 1,000 women, 52% of participants said that their ability to work was affected by period pain, but only 27% of them old their boss the reason for this. About a third of those who took part in the survey requested at least one sick day during their period.
Yet there remains an aspect that some people either do not know or perhaps ignore: the feeling of shame that some women experience during their period. This feeling is rooted in the shame and impurity associated with menstruation in the minds of some Arab societies.
Legacy of stigma
Najwa Ibrahim, the executive director of the Idraak Foundation for Development and Equality, traces this stigma to deep cultural and social roots, including community upbringing and customs. She tells Al-Manassa, “We raise girls to view menstruation as embarrassing and unclean,” alongside a lack of community awareness about reproductive and sexual health issues.
The feminist activist believes that the religious heritage linking the concept of impurity to menstruation plays a role in deepening feelings of rejection or marginalization during this period. During menstruation, women are considered unfit for prayer, are unwelcome in mosques and are prohibited from touching the Quran. It is pure, and they are impure.
Plato described the uterus as a living being “that becomes angry and sad.”
The stigma associated with menstruation appears in several forms, affecting women’s lives in direct and indirect ways, such as personal isolation even in family or educational environments. It also leads to discrimination against them. Some women face do not have access to the hygenic products or medical support they may need, such as sanitary pads and painkillers, or guidance on how to manage and alleviate pain. This leads to implicit or explicit discrimination against them, Ibrahim says.
In the middle of the 3rd century B.C., Plato described the uterus as a living being “that becomes angry and sad” if its desire for pregnancy is not fulfilled. It was believed that menstruation was related to many of the illnesses women suffer from. This legacy deepened among women, passed down from generation to generation. And we grew up hiding our pain from the world, retreating into our rooms for fear that someone might discover our menstruation and catch us in the act.
We inherited the association between uterine bleeding, shame and impurity in a world that never allowed women to express themselves or their relationship with their bodies. Talking about menstruation is still considered taboo and can even sometimes be scandalous. So we keep it hidden in a black bag — the constant companion to the sanitary pad — hiding it from the eyes of passersby.
Silent shame
Many pharmacies place sanitary pad packages in black bags when selling them, as according to custom, your uterine bleeding is a scandal that must not be exposed!
This is the same logic that the Egyptian Olympic Committee used in its statement about excluding boxer Yumna Ayad from the Paris 2024 Olympics after the athlete’s weight increased by 700 grams above the weight she was scheduled to compete. The statement indirectly referred to menstruation, considering discussing directly to be “inappropriate.”
I can’t ask anyone to buy me pads.
This stigma prevents Israa Ihab, a 26-year-old woman from Dakahlia, from asking for sanitary pads when there are other customers in the pharmacy. “If I find someone there, I prefer to wait until they leave, and if the person selling is a man, I go to another pharmacy with a woman,” she said.
“I can’t ask anyone to buy me pads.” But she found a way to cope. “It helped that pharmacies now have a designated section for sanitary pads. I go and grab them, and next to them are the black bags. I pay without any conversation, as if I’m buying drugs.”
The way girls deal with menstruation in general mirrors the way they treat it. “My friends and I have code names for it… the thing came down, or the habit came, and sometimes we just say period.”
Buying pads
Some husbands find it burdensome to buy sanitary pads for their wives, and some refuse, seeing it as shameful. Even if one of them considers it a normal thing privately, the fear of societal judgment makes them hesitant.
“Sometimes when a man asks for pads, he writes it down on a piece of paper so he doesn’t have to say it out loud,” pharmacist Yusra Ayman said, stressing that the vast majority of her customers are women, particularly mothers buying pads for their daughters.
Ayman believes the situation in Cairo, the capital, and large cities differs from that in small towns and villages in Egypt. For example, in Tanta (the country’s fifth most populous city) where she works, the percentage of husbands or brothers coming to buy sanitary pads is higher, although this does not necessarily apply to fathers. “I may not have ever encountered a father buying for his daughter during my years of work,” she said.
The Ministry of Education is sensitive about discussing physical, sexual and reproductive health.
The experience of Alaa Emad, who lives in Heliopolis and was born in Tanta, demonstrates a different approach to menstruation. “We got used to talking about it at home, even in front of my late father and my brother, especially because the whole family were doctors. My father wasn’t surprised, and on the contrary, he would even give me painkillers,” she said. But that didn’t make her able to discuss it so openly with her friends. “When I’m in pain, I don’t say why. I don’t want to be a bother.”
Wesam El-Sharif, the executive director of the Egyptians Without Borders Foundation for Development and a rights-based capacity-building consultant, points out that part of the societal stigma and lack of knowledge about issues like menstruation comes from the lack of skills among science teachers to address topics related to physical, sexual and reproductive health, and their lack of training and knowledge needed to talk to adolescents.
“The Ministry of Education is sensitive about discussing these topics. I don’t understand if it’s shame or fear of public opinion, or if there are legal barriers,” El-Sharif said. She also criticized the restrictions imposed on civil society in carrying out awareness programs on sexual and reproductive health in collaboration with the ministry, which is her area of work.
Violence and abuse
The societal treatment of menstruation doesn’t stop at stigma; it extends to abuse and mockery of women. “Some men refuse to eat food made by a woman who is menstruating, and others won’t sleep next to their wives during their period,” Feminist activist Lamia Lotfi said, noting that this physiological change is used to reinforce patterns of violence against women that are “deeply rooted in Eastern society.”
El-Sharif cited examples of violence based on stigma, such as prohibiting certain foods like pickles and yogurt, banning women and girls from entering religious places, or requiring them to isolate themselves, as well as self-imposed restrictions.
I have finally rebelled against the black bag.
“All this reinforces the idea that women do not have the right to exist equally with men and confirms that they are less capable of participating in public life,” she said.
To overcome these forms of stigma and violence, the Egyptians Without Borders Foundation has organized multiple campaigns to break the barriers around discussing menstruation on social media, along with seminars and training for women and girls, as well as producing films that address poverty and its impact on women’s and girls’ inability to buy sanitary pads, as one of the reasons for school dropout in poor communities.
Breaking barriers
Among these campaigns, the “Free from Violence” campaign sought to address the violence that female students face in schools, aiming to create safe spaces for discussing controversial topics, including menstruation. A major part of the campaign focused on building self-esteem among girls and eliminating the stigma of menstruation.
If society does not understand what women go through during their menstrual periods in a natural way, the change must begin with us, the women. We need to break through barriers, and perhaps we need a shock and to speak out without shame.
Personally, it took me years of working on issues that directly affect women to overcome the shame of being a woman who suffers from period pain every month. I no longer feel embarrassed to buy sanitary pads. I no longer hide or feel awkward. I have finally rebelled against the black bag.
