Integrating Wiki-Menstruation to Achieve the SDGs
Channel: Wikimedia Sverige
Date: 2019-08-17

To discuss progress on the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we are inspired by Wikimania 2019 theme in Integrating Water, Sanitation, Health, and Gender Equality to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. While access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) is central to proper menstrual hygiene management, the discussion, which explored the complex realities and potential solutions in Colombia, Sweden, Kenya, and Nepal, highlighted that menstrual hygiene is also intrinsically linked to success across the SDGs. This is particularly the case for the SDGs related to education—including comprehensive sexual education—gender equality, sexual and reproductive health, child marriage, sustainable consumption, and economic opportunity, among others. Despite the fact that 800 million women and girls menstruate every day, menstruation remains shrouded in silence and taboos. Women and girls lack dedicated, integrated services and information to menstruate in dignity, obstructed not only by lacking infrastructure—including the fact that one in three women live without a decent toilet—but also deeper challenges of gender norms, myths, and stigma.

Specifically, the five pillars that constitute this view are: that menstruation matter worldwide; that it matters to boys and men; that is matters in all areas of life; that is matters to equality; and that it is an issue of inclusion as a whole

Session page: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2019:Diversity/Integrating_Wiki-Menstruation_to_Achieve_the_SDGs