The bogus presumptions about menstruating women are tragically not confined to the history books — namely that we are weak, dirty, unhinged, less than and just different. At the heart of this lingering stigma is the idea that we are unequal to our male counterparts. Women then ingest these views and appropriate them as our own, inflicting wounds on ourselves and other women — and girls — around us. And by keeping periods unmentionable, women become unwitting accomplices in perpetuating these myths.

In South Korea, which is a much less conservative environment, politicians do not take their wives around with them as much as their American counterparts do. Showing pride in your wife is thought of as juvenile bad form. There's a special pejorative for people who do it.

Korea’s perception on gender has not yet reached an advanced level.

I have never understood why menstruation is spoken of like a secret. She recalled being excited as a teenager to finally have her first period after being the last among her peers to get the mark of womanhood.

The pandemic has revealed that... poor people—people in marginalized communities—are more prone to contract the disease and die from it because of generally worse health, limited access to health care, and other things that define this unequal society. ...[A] positive way to respond to this is to accept that and find a way to reduce that inequality, and it is already happening in some countries. ...I'm not usually a cheerleader for my own country, South Korea... we have so many shameful world records... the highest suicide rate, the lowest fertility rate... name it, but South Korea has... managed the pandemic really well, first of all because... despite this general aversion to the welfare state, it has a very robust public health insurance. ...So anyone who had problems could... get tested and treated... This is how you manage to keep the death toll under 300, but in that country... because it controlled the health situation so well, it actually didn't go into full lockdown, but still, people were wary of going out and the biggest sufferers from this was... people... running small bars, restaurants, karaoke bars... [T]hese people were very hard hit and... I was... surprised [the country is] talking about universal employment insurance scheme. So... it doesn't matter what your job used to be... Countries are now talking about introducing that covers people who work in any type of company, self-employed people, social platform workers, people working in the . ...[I]f it happens it will be a really progressive change...

If you have a mother and also have sisters, and you slut-shame hardworking women, shame on you. And if you are a woman and partake in such stupidity, I don’t have words for you. You all should know better.

... as an adolescent ... from the world around me, I learned that must I hide all signs that I menstruated or face deep, crushing shame.

I instigated the conversation around period shame and period stigma with men and boys asserting further that, period shaming starts with the man and the boy, because they have been brought up to believe that if a woman happens to have a stain, it’s an appropriate response to laugh at, or castigate her – and then the woman has been taught that they need to go into hiding. That’s the unlearning that we need to do.

Why do women go around feeling so embarrassed of ourselves? Why do we wind up feeling we have to be perfect, or pure, pretty or agreeable just to gain a modicum of acceptance? I think it’s because that’s actually the fact of being a woman in a patriarchal society.

…gender is cultural: we have menarche to deal with, virginity, menopause, pregnancy, childbirth; these things are unavoidable. And in some places they've been wise enough to have ritual and ceremony about significant events. It is unfortunate in our culture-meaning north American mainstream culture—that all this has been minimized to the point where little girls are even afraid to say that they are starting to menstruate when they should be very happy. Grown women are afraid to say that they are approaching the menopause, when that means that they have lived a whole successful life. They've lived so long that they can have this…

Let me highlight that menstrual poverty is not something that only affects girls or women who are poor. It is not just lack of sanitary wear, but it is also a lack of proper menstrual facilities, period education and a period-friendly environment... When a girl is on her period, she needs a supportive environment that helps her to manage her period with dignity. I was born into a family with five girls with an extended family of 15 people in rural Zvimba. Seven of us were girls who needed at least seven packets of sanitary pads every month to manage our periods but due to unavailability, we had to resort to using anything else to manage our periods... Our main challenge in our work is lack of resources to reach out to more vulnerable girls who are suffering from period poverty. The move by Scotland has shown us that it can be done but Zimbabwe still has a long way to go to completely eradicate period poverty.

When there is a problem of poor hygiene that is attributed to us women, when children who have a poor education are attributed to us women, no Inkotanyi woman should accept that someone in the society is sick of amavunja or that the children continue to be sick of kwashiorkor"

I think one of the things that women suffer from is talking about themselves... We grow up to serve and never to think about ourselves. Women are the last to admit their accomplishments.

I regret the narrow contracted education of the females of my own country.