Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to make visible why many MHM organizations and social businesses favor product-based solutions, what I deem “technological fixes” or overly simplified interventions that introduce new problems. Products are tangible, relatable, measurable, and, many MHM advocates argue, a “foot in the door.” But they also rely on social constructions of the “the good body” as one contained and disciplined as well as the assumption that markets can fix social problems. Instead of troubling the gendered, body-negative views of menstruation, MHM promotes “management” by the good biocitizen. Hence, the “good period” is the one we don’t know about; the “good girl” is one who hides her menstruation, thus singularly burdening girls with MHM. In this way, MHM devolves to a consumerist path to modernity rather than a program for progressive social change.
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Notes
- 1.
The text of the GOI guidelines reads: “The choice and preference for an option depends on individual preference, price, availability in the local market and convenience. Simple, clear and factually correct information helps girls to decide which menstrual absorbent to use, free from judgement by others” (Government of India 2015, 26).
- 2.
During my fieldwork, I heard from numerous people that Muruganantham machines did often break down and that he claimed that he alone could fix them, causing pad-making operations to halt indefinitely until he could make the trip from southern India and complete the repair. I did not confirm these stories, but their frequency does cause me pause. I also heard complaints about the quality of the pads. For example, when I visited the Bangalore-based MITU Foundation, we discussed their production of single-use pads using Muruganantham machine. I later learned that MITU founder Kala Charlu was not happy with the performance of the pads it made (Dahlqvist 2018). Since my brief visit to India, I have continued to hear from NGOs and social businesses, especially after the release of Pad Man, that the machines are unreliable and the pads they produce low quality.
- 3.
Earlier in my data collection process, I interviewed Ruby Cup co-founder Maxie Matthiessen. During our interview, we discussed my plans to visit her team during my upcoming trip. But when I reached out to Matthiessen to work out the timetable, she told me that Ruby Cup was not doing business in Kenya any longer, although they were working with 17 local partners in East Africa, West Africa, and India who distribute cups through Ruby Cup’s Buy One, Give One (BOGO) program (for every cup purchased, one is donated). One of the partners is Golden Girls Foundation, and I am grateful Matthiessen referred me to them.
- 4.
Sharra Vostral (2008) found a similar process in the US in the 1920s and 1930s. Corporations were successful at introducing their products through educational campaigns aimed at adolescent girls. Over time, schools ceded the job of teaching puberty education to product makers, a strange division of labor that persists today.
- 5.
I am indebted to conversations with Ilana Cohen, who helped me see the connection between MHM discourse and both Ortner and Rosaldo’s theories of the subordination of women.
- 6.
This is akin to Nguyen’s (2012) concept of the “the gift of freedom” that draws on her analysis of Vietnamese refugees being “liberated” twice by the US, first through war and later through refugee programs. Her thesis is that the gift comes with strings attached, namely, the expectation of an unceasing debt of gratitude that produces the Vietnamese people as neocolonial subjects.
- 7.
I am indebted to Roxanna Villalobos’ work connecting biocitizenry with the so-called obesity epidemic for shaping my thinking about how to make similar connections with MHM.
- 8.
Thanks go to Sharra Vostral for suggesting Fouché’s work to tease out the consumption-citizenship connection.
- 9.
Here, I must pause and insist that I am not naïve to the power of the materiality of menstruation. Even writing this relatively benign bit about menstrual evidence caused me hesitation. I imagine readers recoiling and muttering the usual counterarguments that assert that of course no one wants to directly encounter menstruation. No one wants to see the products of our defecation or urination either. This stuff is gross, and thus, the waste products of bodies are considered personal matters, better left to the privacy of the (locked) bathroom. But as Elizabeth Kissling cogently counters, there is a difference between how we react to different bodily processes and their products. And the difference is gender. Menstruation is gendered (shaped by cultural assumptions about women’s bodies as flawed) and, thus, devalued. And, besides, she reminds us:
People do talk about bowel movements. All the time. They talk about how particular foods affect their digestion. They excuse themselves from meetings and social gatherings to use the bathroom, sometimes saying why in euphemistic terms, sometimes in coarse and graphic language. The older they get, the more they do it. This is not merely about what’s “natural” or “private.” It’s about women, and about who counts and what matters. Women count, and menstruation matters (Kissling 2012).
- 10.
While I am tempted to introduce a critique of social businesses, a thorough analysis is beyond the scope of this book. There is a literature, however, that explores if such models marrying market-based principles with social justice agendas can, indeed, deliver social goods, putting mission above market. Gawell (2012), for instance, asserts that such ventures might exploit perceived needs, transforming them into opportunities over authentic local priorities.
- 11.
There is a burgeoning literature exploring other ways that menstruation and menopause are commodified, creating consumer demand where it did not previously exist. (For example, on the rising popularity of cycle-stopping contraception in Brazil, see Sanabria 2016.)
- 12.
I thank Sharra Vostral for helping me develop this point.
- 13.
This example recalls another system failure I heard about, though only as anecdote. When Janie Hampton, founder of the World Menstrual Network, presented her research on distributing menstrual cups to schoolgirls in Malawi, she quipped “In Cameroon, they parachuted 3000 cups, and it was a disaster.” Hampton offered this short story as illustration of the wrong way to do product distribution.
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Bobel, C. (2019). Disciplining Girls Through the Technological Fix: Modernity, Markets, Materials. In: The Managed Body. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89414-0_7
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