Emma Burkey- When pads are a luxury, getting your period means missing out on life

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/health/tanzania-period-poverty-asequals-africa-intl/

This article discusses how periods and the lack of proper sanitary tissues are causing girls to miss school in places around the world struck with poverty, (this article focuses on those places in Africa.) The article speaks of many women using cloth pieces to sub for the lack of sanitary pads. For one girl in the article a pack of pads is 10% of her monthly salary of $13. This article is part of CNN's As Equals series.

The fact that women around the world are having to use pieces of cloth, that soak with blood by 10AM, instead of pads is appalling. Even more so because no woman chooses to have a period. Even with the access to pads, they are often too expensive and some types of pads cause burning and irritation; the lack of them often causes infections. Some girls' mothers tell their daughters to buy their own pads with their own money. All of these issues cause girls to miss out on days at school that then can cause them to drop out of school instead of pursuing a career. On the brighter side of the spectrum, the Femme International organization provided a pack of reusable pads to all the girls at one secondary school. These washable pads have changed the girls' lives and improved the overall attendance at the school. The next step is for these pads to spread to more places. This connects to the article that I wrote about last six weeks that discussed the pregnancies of many Tanzanian girls; they connect because they have to do with the same/ similar girls. In American history it can be related to the overall fight for women to have equal pay in jobs, because here there is a fight for affordable necessities.