In Bangladesh, Menstrual Hygiene Day 2025 is more than a date on a calendar, it is a reminder of everything still to be done.
While corporate-sponsored awareness events and colorful hashtags flood the internet today, millions of menstruators in Bangladesh, garment workers, schoolgirls, flood survivors, Rohingya refugees, transfolks, and domestic workers still manage their periods without dignity, privacy, or safety. In shelters during floods, there are no separate toilets, no waste bins, no pads. In factories, menstruators work long hours with no access to clean bathrooms. In schools, girls drop out because they bleed.
A recent study from coastal and climate-affected regions shows that menstruation is treated as a side issue in disaster response, if it’s considered at all. Most shelters lack water, privacy, or any menstrual hygiene materials. Women are still forced to use cloth, paper, or worse, and many report infections they can’t afford to treat.
This isn’t about awareness anymore. People are aware. This is about access, affordability, and structural neglect. And it’s about how menstruation continues to be a tool of exclusion, used to humiliate, restrict, and punish those who are already at the margins.
We at Bangladesh Feminist Archives do not want more polite campaigns. We want:
-Public toilets with free menstrual products.
-Pads included in disaster relief kits.
-Education programs that name period shame for what it is, gendered violence.
-Menstrual justice that includes not just cis women, but all who menstruate.
Bangladesh cannot claim progress while its menstruators bleed in silence, shame, and unsanitary conditions. Menstrual hygiene is not a charity project. It’s a basic right. And we will not stop until it is treated as such.
Bangladesh Feminist Archives
May 28, 2025
Bangladesh Feminist Archives 