Comparative study on the influence of international development on menstruation: From the perspective of gender and medicalization

Keywords

menstruation,gender,medicalization　

Objectives

In recent years, the management of menstruation has been emphasized from perspectives such as improving the female school enrollment rate, gender equality, and water and hygiene environment in the field of international development. Different countries have begun to formulate and implement policies on menstrual hygiene management. And menstrual products such as paper sanitary napkins are distributed in global markets and affecting menstruation management. In this way, menstruation is managed in the female body though politico-economic circuits as a universal phenomenon. However, how menstruation is viewed and managed depends on local conventions. Societies that shun the physiological phenomenon of menstruation are prevalent throughout the world, and in cultural anthropology this has been conceptualized as “pollution” along with the impurity of birth, death, and other physiological phenomena.
In this research project we will conduct a cross-cultural comparison on the influence that development intervention has on menstruation management and the culture surrounding menstruation around the world, from two perspectives — gender and the medicalization of menstruation. The objective of the project is to identify the cross-cultural and distinctively local characteristics of the landscape surrounding menstruation in the contemporary period since the management of menstruation has become an international development issue.