Discrimination against menstruating women in India

[Bluewater1]

Can't believe what I'm reading this morning, women in an Indian hostel forced to strip to prove they are not currently menstruating!! Because women who have periods are apparently "impure" and must declare themselves, avoid the kitchen area and sit on the last bench to eat.....I have no words....

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-asia-india-51504992

It is hard to believe this is happening anywhere in the 21st century. It shows just how much work still needs to be done internationally on women's rights.

Absolutely

Just awful.

It has been a feature of religious beliefs in India for a long time and just shows how women are routinely discriminated against for their biology, everywhere in the world, and how that discrimination has real impacts. Bloody pathetic 'strongarm' men who can't cope with even the thought of a bit of blood, let alone the reality of it!

Also Nepal...search for Nepal and period hut deaths. Basically women are expelled from society whilst on their period. Been mad illegal but it will take decades to change minds

That is awful.

I heard this on the World Sevice and felt sick.

Is there any action that we in the UK can take on this? Any international women’s organisations we can support, write to ambassadors or something?

Awful awful...

Here's a list of charities supporting women in India, I haven't checked them out blog.giveindia.org/women/10-ngos-for-women-you-should-support-for-women-rights/

It’s a Muslim ‘rule’ (if that’s the correct word) as far as I know.

My Muslim colleague told me about it in my last job about a decade ago in the office kitchen as we were making lunch.

If you are on your period you must not be involved in making communal food and should sit away from the table to eat your meal. It’s been like that for millennia. There are other rules for women too. Like after sex with your husband you must get up and wash. He doesn’t have to. Just the woman. I can’t remember the other rules but men and women have different rules as far as I know. Based on cleanliness. In a hot country with little water it was probably a sensible rule at the time. Many countries still do not have running water and disease is rife. No wonder if you can’t wash your hands. Frightening.
Happy to be corrected if I am wrong.

Just dropping in to say that India is a huge country, and most of the reports we hear in the West refer to the Hindi-speaking states of the North. India is not at all a unified country. South India is quite different from the north, and South Indians are often in protest against North-India domination. They do not speak Hindi, for a start -- they insist on their own language plus English as a second language. The south Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala are almost a different country from North India, and rural areas far less backward.

That said, there are also taboos concerning periods in those states, but far less severe.

And this is a good story about an Indian man doing something to make sanitary protection affordable for women. The article doesn't say where he's from, but he has a typically Tamil name and Coimbatore is in Tamil Nadu, so...

www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26260978

The college in question is Hindu, not Muslim.

I'm absolutely no fan of religion and there are aspects of Islam which I find abhorrent but I think you are talking bollocks.

So far as washing after sex, even if that is a rule to me it is saying it is the body which has been penetrated which needs to be cleaned because of being penetrated. The body doing the penetration has not been dirtied or contaminated by contact with the body it entered.

To be clear I was replying to Elieza's post.