When you
are a team of mainly women, you have to deal with many issues that generally
affect you. One of such issues is our menstrual cycle. This affects us at least
once every month. Yes, we used the word ‘affects’ because it does and
because our cycle is a 28-day cycle, there is always the chance that we ‘see’
our periods twice in one more month.
(Okay!
Breathe. This post can’t be laced with expletives when you have only begun. So
calm the hell down and write).
Anyway,
we are not here to lecture. We are here to rant.
So first
question; how many people have had to buy sanitary pads at ₦400 since December,
2016? We can see your hands in the air. Are you as pissed the hell off as we
are? Because we are mad!
Okay. We
are calm now. Let us do this properly.
So the
price of sanitary pads recently went up by over a hundred percent. We will
use Always Sanitary Pad for our example. The premium pads come
in packs of seven or eight for small packs and sixteen for big or super packs.
The small packs used to be sold for ₦170. It went up to ₦220 and later, a ₦30
increase. Now, it is sold at ₦400. The super packs now go for ₦800 and it is
pegged to get to ₦1000. In one sentence, the end is near!
For
people who do not get it, let us explain a bit.
A woman
who has light flow can afford to use one small pack during her period if she
has a four day flow and uses one pad in the morning and another at night. The
ideal is one pad every eight hours but we are assuming that since her flow is
light, she may not need to change as much. A lady with normal flow may have to
change her pad every six – eight hours, meaning that if she has a four-day
flow, she needs to use the super pack for her monthlies. While most women fall
into this category, a vast number of women fall into the heavy flow category.
These women have to change their pads as often as once every three hours;
translating to one small Always Pad per day. Collating that gives four packs if
she has a four-day flow.
So using
the example above, we can infer that women spend the following for their
monthly menstrual cycle.
TYPE OF FLOW
|
NUMBER OF DAYS
|
DURATION OF PAD USE
(HOURS)
|
NUMBER OF PADS/DAY
|
TOTAL NUMBER OF
PADS
|
TYPE OF PAD
|
COST
(₦)
|
LIGHT
|
4
|
12
|
2
|
8
|
ONE
8-IN-1
PACK
|
400
|
NORMAL
|
4
|
6
|
4
|
16
|
TWO
8-IN-1
PACK
|
800
|
HEAVY
|
4
|
3
|
8
|
32
|
FOUR
8-IN-1
PACK
|
1600
|
Of course
these are all estimates as there are women who bleed for more than four days.
Why is
this an issue? Well simple. Women menstruate every month and for most part, it isn’t a choice. We have to deal
with pain or discomfort or the stress of having our hormones go haywire and
then between three to seven days, our uterus makes us feel like we were bad for
not giving it a baby. The only way out is getting pregnant (which is only a
nine month reprieve), using drugs or menopause. You can see that our periods
are not a luxury; they are a necessity!
Why then
should the price of sanitary pads be so expensive? Is our menstruation a thing
of luxury now? Is it necessary that the law of demand and supply apply here?
And in a country where many girls don’t have access to sanitary pads, is it
wise to alienate even more girls and women? We want to know because this
rankles.
To make
matters worse, some men have told us to go back to using rags or clothe pads.
Some have even suggested we use banana leaves (we kid you not). While
we want to pull our collective shoes and beat the brakes off these men, we will
try not to. The general belief is that our mothers did it so why shouldn’t we?
First off, our mothers used pads, not clothes. We learned the use of pads from
them. However, even if they did, it is no reason to continue to do that
now just because. Some of our parents drank camel urine for certain
ailments. Do YOU do that now?
Some
people even went as far as saying it is not a national problem but a women’s
problem. My question to such people is this; if something affects half the
population of a country, doesn’t that qualify as a national problem? Oh! We
forgot. We are Africans. Women don’t matter, right?
Anyway,
our hygiene during and after our menstrual cycle is very important to us and, it
shouldn’t cost us so much to keep ourselves clean when we bleed. We hope
that Procter and Gamble, producers of Always Sanitary Pads (Nigeria)
can lead the pack and bring the price back down. They are already making a lot
of money as it is and it is almost unfair to have to ask for more. We know that
almost everything now can be blamed on the recession but we hope that this
phase passes quickly.
And if
they refuse to reduce the price, we should begin to think of an alternative. We
heard of reusable cloth pads for the first time yesterday and though the idea
sounds yucky, we will be forced to switch if we are forced to. The customer is
always king. If we band together to hold Procter and Gamble and
other pad producers accountable, they will have to do the right thing.
A woman’s
sanitary needs are not a luxury. They shouldn’t be treated as such.
Reusable and Re-washable pads. Image: AliExpress |
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