Sri Lanka: How period poverty keeps girls out of school

When 14-year-old Janani gets her period, she doesn’t always make it to school. Some days, there are no sanitary pads at home, and Janani is forced to use a pad made from old clothes. On those days, she skips classes.“I feel ashamed of using cloth,” Janani told DW. “If we miss school because of this, they won’t teach us again the lessons we’ve missed, will they?”A survey conducted by DW of more than 500 girls across six schools in Sri Lanka’s Central Province indicated that nearly half — 46% — struggled to afford pads each month, with the figure skyrocketing to 81% at one school.Janani’s mother works as a tea plucker in the hills of Nuwara Eliya District and earns about 1,350 rupees (around €4 or $4.5) per day. She buys her daughter pads when she can afford it. When she has no pads, Janani said, she wonders “why I get my period at all.”Almost half of the girls surveyed by DW said they missed school during their period for a myriad of reasons, including excessive pain. And it is affecting their school performance.“I keep thinking about it, and so I can’t study,” said 14-year-old Girija referring to period poverty, a sentiment echoed by some of her peers.

‘Some teachers will buy pads for us’

Sri Lanka’s government is making an effort to address the problem as its economy inches towards recovery following an economic collapse in 2022.The cost of a pack of 10 sanitary napkins increased by 92% after the economic crisis, from 140 to 270 rupees, according to the Advocata Institute. Imported sanitary pads continue to be taxed in Sri Lanka at 51%.Teacher Anthonyraj Devaneshi told DW that her school gave out one sanitary pad to girls in emergency situations, but could not afford to give them out consistently.“Some teachers will buy pads for us, but others won’t,” said 12-year-old Harini, adding that she found it awkward to ask and would usually ask her friends to do it on her behalf. “If my friends aren’t at school [when I get my period], I’ll just come home.”Harini has to make the long journey home by herself if her parents are unable to pick her up — a walk which takes her an hour through the hills.Her school also has no place for girls to dispose of their sanitary pads, with several girls telling DW they avoided changing at school. Two schools had a policy requiring students who took a pad from school to purchase a replacement and hand it in the next day.

Cloth pads can be unsafe

A 2021 study by Advocata revealed that half of Sri Lankan women did not spend any money on sanitary products.Rashmira Balasuriya, director of the Arka Initiative to combat period poverty and technical advisor to Sri Lanka’s Family Planning Association, said the issue had “most likely gotten worse” following the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis.To save money, many girls use cloth. About 44% of the girls surveyed by DW reported using a combination of cloth and pads or exclusively cloth during their period, although not all of them cited unaffordability as the reason.Balasuriya said the lack of sunlight in Sri Lanka’s hill country meant cloth pads were not always safe to use, because they would not properly dry.Girija told DW she had started using pads after developing an infection from cloth. “Using cloth is hard. It feels like it’s not secure,” she said. “I feel scared to sit because I’m worried something might happen. It’s hard to walk, to sit, or to sleep.”At least a dozen other girls told DW they had also developed infections from using cloth.Girija said her family took out loans from the store to buy pads and she felt angry with her mother when they could not afford them. However, her mother told her, “It doesn’t matter if we have to use cloth, you use pads.” Still, Girija only changes her pad only once every seven hours, afraid of running out.“When we use cloth for too long, sometimes it burns,” said 13-year-old Saraswathi, who sometimes uses cloth pads even at school, although she avoids changing for the entire day. “It’s difficult to walk with cloth, and my hips hurt.”Teacher Thiruchelvam Mangala Roobini said there was also a lack of awareness around menstruation, with many girls who lacked pads forced to bleed through their underwear, which they would then dispose of in the toilets.

Government initiatives fall short

Last year, the Sri Lankan government distributed two vouchers of 600 rupees each to 800,000 schoolgirls, with the last disbursement given in September 2024. The goal of the scheme was to allow the girls to buy sanitary pads.But Balasuriya said the voucher system was “not a sustainable one,” as the average woman needs about 20 pads over five days in a single month, and the money was simply insufficient. Some girls told DW the pads they purchased had run out in one or two months.Roobini believes that many girls did not purchase sanitary pads with the vouchers, citing previous instances where shoe vouchers provided by the government had been used to purchase other necessities.One school principal told DW he was “100% sure” that the sanitary pad voucher had even been used to purchase alcohol.

New vouchers expected this year

The current government, led by Anura Kumara Dissanayake, announced in March that it would spend 1.44 billion rupees on a similar initiative, distributing two vouchers of 720 rupees each to all menstruating schoolgirls.A representative from the Department of Education told DW the initiative would begin again at the end of May, but it was not possible to say whether it would continue after the two sets of voucher disbursements. The lawmakers have yet to decide on the issue.“If they give us pads continuously, it’ll be good,” 14-year-old Girija told DW. “Then they won’t run out, right? We can keep using them.”