Menstrual Justice: A Missing Element in India’s Health Policies

Abstract

Proposing a novel framework of menstrual justice, the chapter argues that women’s health needs must be understood as the result of the complex interplay of their everyday gendered experiences of living, their biology, and their medical condition. The Indian state’s health policies fail women because they do not recognize that the marking of women as impure menstruating bodies is a cause of women’s health inequity from birth to death. This very denial by the state policy of women’s gendered experience of health is menstrual injustice. The chapter elaborates on this idea by establishing the links between women’s stigmatization as menstruating bodies, lack of control over their bodies, and ill-health, pointing to the high incidence of a variety of menstrual health problems in pre-menarche, during menstruation, perimenopause and postmenopause. The chapter then identifies the gender-specific biases, blind spots, gaps, and barriers in state policies that impede the security of women’s health across their life-cycles.