Breaking the Global Taboos of Menstruation

Nicholas D. Kristof writes up a successful study in Ghana, Africa focused on keeping girls in schools by delivering sanitary napkins. This isn’t a new topic for us at A of C, but reading A Strategy for Keeping Girls in African Schools caused me to put down the coffee cup and reflect on this most basic issue in building girl’s confidence and equality with men.

Besides Kristof’s always excellent column, we located one other article on the study from early Feb. What does this tell us about the world’s interest in poor women?

Luckily the article New study shows sanitary protection for girls in developing countries may provide a route to raising their educational standards, is posted as a press release at ModernGhana.com. Please read it.

Searching for a visual at Flickr, I was stopped dead cold again. Fascinated with the sensuality of ancient Indian culture, I was beautifully ‘shocked’ to find the photo ‘The Menstruating Goddess’ on the exterior wall of the Kamakhya temple in Guwahati.

I’ll be writing on this topic in its entirety. What has happened in the history of women that we went from being ‘the menstruating goddess’ to dirty, filthy whores? I fear that certain religions are a big part of the answer. Anne