.png)
Rethinking Menstrual Hygiene Day through Menstrual Justice
Written by: Vanessa Zammar, Jeyetna Co-Founder; reviewed by Sara Barahmeh and Summer el Samra
Menstrual taboos are almost universal. They silence and hide menstrual experiences: the bleeding, the pain, the cycle and its symptoms, the questions, and the red.
The taboo even sits at the heart of the international day marking the issue: Menstrual Hygiene Day, held on 28 May. Yet for years, feminists and menstrual justice advocates have moved away from the word “hygiene”, preferring health, rights, and justice.
In the SWANA region, menstrual injustices are directly tied to military occupation, genocide, forced mass displacement in Lebanon, Palestine and Sudan, and the exploitative Kafala system, a modern slavery system that binds migrant domestic workers to their employers. This context shows the limits of international agencies’ approaches to menstruation, particularly when they fail to address systemic and institutional oppression, as well as the use of menstrual stigma to coerce migrant domestic workers.
Jeyetna is a feminist collective addressing menstrual injustices in Lebanon. It was founded in 2021, as hyperinflation made disposable menstrual products unaffordable for much of the population. At the time, the caretaker government had issued a list of subsidised essential products to ease the burden of the economic crisis on households. Razors were protected, but menstrual products were left off the “basic needs list”.
This example helped politicise and publicise period poverty as a collective and public health issue. It is in this context that Jeyetna began its work. The name builds on the Lebanese euphemism ejetne, used to say “I have my period”, but conjugated in the collective form. Our approach is rooted in menstrual justice, bringing menstruation from an individualised and privatised experience into a political and collective space.
While stigma is societal, political and patriarchal, our work so far has focused on addressing internalised menstrual taboos among people who menstruate. We organise awareness sessions that open conversations and question normative approaches to pain, cycle length and product use. We challenge myths and create space for people who menstruate to regain autonomy over knowledge of their bodies and their decisions.
Our work builds on language justice and original visual representation that depicts menstrual experiences as they are. We work with community-based organisations to tailor our events to the realities of different communities in Lebanon, while integrating their insights into our understanding of menstrual experiences across the life course.
Menstrual justice is about interrogating power and the systems that control the bodies of people who menstruate. It uses an anti-stigma and life-course approach that extends beyond teenage years and bleeding.
Menstrual justice advocates work across multiple areas, rooted in bodily autonomy. This includes access to safe products, affordability, the range of options available to people who menstruate, and access to clean and private bathrooms on their own terms. It also includes access to healthcare systems and research that validate menstrual experiences in all their diversity, and that do not normalise pain and discomfort during puberty, the menstrual cycle, perimenopause or menopause.
All of this requires descriptive and neutral language. Neutral does not mean depoliticised. It means deliberately moving away from euphemisms, nicknames and stigma-laden terms used to describe menstruation. Neutrality also extends to visual representation: portraying menstrual experiences as they are, rather than obscuring, sanitising or beautifying them, as menstrual product advertising often does.
In this context, midwives can be important providers of knowledge and care throughout the life course. As global efforts grow to recognise midwives’ expertise and professional role, the menstrual justice framework offers an opportunity for collaboration. It can help strengthen local knowledge and care systems, ensuring that everyone who menstruates receives adequate care and attention to their concerns.
Israel’s war on Lebanon, its occupation of around 6% of Lebanese territory, and its forced displacement orders affecting over 14.3% of the country have displaced more than one million people. This includes Lebanese citizens, Palestinian, Syrian and Sudanese refugees, and migrant domestic workers, among others.
Displacement has serious consequences for people who menstruate. Many struggle to access period products, painkillers, and clean and private bathrooms. Stress and cold can worsen menstrual symptoms, including increased pain, irregular cycles, periods occurring twice a month, and heavier bleeding. Many people do not have the space to rest or maintain routines that would otherwise bring comfort during their period. In the first month of the war, UNFPA estimated that 11,600 displaced people were pregnant, 4,000 of whom would give birth over the following three months.
Feminist solidarity networks, including Jeyetna, have raised funds to support menstrual and SRHR emergency needs. They have provided thousands of period products, painkillers, hot water bottles and pregnancy kits for women about to give birth. They have also coordinated to ensure refugees and displaced migrant domestic workers, who are excluded from government shelters, can access services.
Yet the humanitarian sector still often categorises menstruation as a hygiene issue. This narrows the response to disposable product provision and leaves out many other aspects and phases of the cycle.
The link between hygiene and menstruation sits at the crossroads of industry interests and the NGO-isation of the topic. For the past 13 years, brands profiting from disposable “feminine hygiene” products have supported Menstrual Hygiene Day, an initiative launched by WASH United, a Berlin-based non-profit that shifted its focus from water, sanitation and hygiene to menstrual health and hygiene.
While some brands now disclose product ingredients after sustained public pressure, disclosure does not equal regulation. The deeper issue remains weak oversight of product composition and the continued circulation of chemical-heavy disposable products.
Although the sector recognises the weight of stigma and taboo in menstrual experiences, hygiene-centred discourse can reinforce the idea that menstrual blood is something to be cleaned and hidden. This aligns with patriarchal ideas that cast menstruation as impure, dirty or shameful.
The sector also often brings technical and standardised solutions to people who menstruate, with a focus on girls from the Global Majority. The emphasis is frequently on how to manage menstruation discreetly through products, toilets and behavioural advice, so school and work attendance are not interrupted.
“Feminine hygiene” campaigns deepen anxieties around smell, leakage and visibility, encouraging self-monitoring rather than structural change. This creates a productivist trap: menstruation is acknowledged only when it threatens school or work attendance, and policy attention centres on keeping participation uninterrupted rather than ensuring wellbeing. The logic is not “your body deserves accommodation”, but “your body must not interrupt institutions.”
Menstrual experiences span a lifetime. Dysmenorrhoea, which affects an estimated 50–90% of people who menstruate, and conditions such as PCOS are often ignored. Recently, patient-led efforts have renamed PCOS as Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome, or PMOS. This shows the power of language:
Language and care are connected. Neutral terms validate people’s realities.
Patients must inform processes. Menstruators’ lived knowledge should drive change.
Knowledge is situated. There is no one-size-fits-all approach across global contexts.
Incorporating pain, menstrual disorders and wider menstrual experiences requires health systems, academic research and policy to shift their approach. Menstrual health cannot be reduced to products or hygiene. It must be understood as a matter of justice, autonomy, care and structural change.
McLoughlin, S. (2021, June 2). Period poverty: A global crisis. Women In International Security (WIIS). https://wiisglobal.org/period-poverty-a-global-crisis-2/
Christou, W., Swan, L., Wilson, H., & Scruton, P. (2026, May 11). Vision of destruction: Israel’s assault on southern Lebanon in video, maps and charts. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/11/vision-destruction-israel-assault-southern-lebanon-video-maps-charts
Johnson, D. (2026, March 13). Middle East war: Women in Lebanon forced to give birth on roadside. UN News. https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/03/1167129
McClure, S. (2024, November 21). Period products, health risks, and regulations. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/period-products-health-risks-and-regulations/
Barahmeh, S., Zammar, V., & El Samra, S. (2026). Cycle breakers: Reimagining menstrual policy beyond “dignified” pads: Lebanon’s case for menstrual justice. Jeyetna. https://jeyetna.org/cycle-breakers-reimagining-menstrual-policy-beyond-dignified-pads-lebanons-case-for-menstrual-justice/
McKenna, K. A., & Fogleman, C. D. (2021). Dysmenorrhea. American Family Physician, 104(2), 164–170.
May, N., Lu, D., & Davis, N. (2026, May 12). “Unprecedented” global effort gives new name to polycystic ovary syndrome — and new hope to millions of women. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/polycystic-ovary-syndrome-pcos-new-name-polyendocrine-metabolic-ovarian-syndrome-pmos
