From 10 to 0 to 100 Journey of a Myna Girl

[Music]

[Applause]

it’s that

time of the month the time when a woman

starts to hide

feels shameful and impure the time when

she’s on her period and she knows what

this means for her

that she would have to manage her blood

somehow

either use the rags at home or send her

brother discreetly to purchase pad

packets from the local chemist shop

she would then have to quietly change

them in the corner of her room in her

house in the slum

and then throw them out of the window as

if nothing happened

and then when she and her brothers are

to go to school together the next

morning she realizes that she could

stain her skirt

and then everyone in school would laugh

at her

so she decides not to go at all

her brothers go to school and they

continue going every month while she

sits at home

she doesn’t even know why she’s bleeding

every month is it because she’s impure

has she done something wrong she starts

blaming herself for it

already she’s being left behind

she’s forming part of the next billion

women in the world group that is being

left behind

those that have just so much catching up

to do

imagine now that if two people are

running a hundred meter race and one

starts 10 meters behind the line with

more hurdles placed on the way

it is easy to see who’s going to win

unfortunately that is the plight of many

girls in india today

particularly so for the invisible girls

those who are left out those with little

opportunity

and without the basic amenities to live

by

like stable shelter toilet clean water

sanitary pads decent schooling

so how do we get women who are starting

at that 10 meters behind

line to the 100 meter line

how do we lift these women up and then

help them prosper

since i was 15 i’ve been working with

girls whose stories have haunted me

angered me and urged me to do something

about it

in the urban slum communities everywhere

i went i realized that women were being

held

back in slums in villages in

all kinds of communities i was in a

village in rygar district

in 2013 somewhere it is a district near

mumbai

where i was staying for a couple of

months trying to understand

how the village norms worked and trying

to work with the village punjab to get

toilets to their homes

the sarpanch then was a woman a

beneficiary of our sarpanch law that

mandates a woman sarpanch in the village

every 10 years

and she had five children she had four

girls and then the youngest one was a

boy

and of course they kept having children

until they had a boy

so i asked her why that was and she said

my son will take care of me when i’m old

the girls will go away to their in-laws

i heard versions of the story constantly

women were being made to pay the price

of an age-old tradition that makes

parents even subconsciously invest less

in their daughters knowing that benefits

from investing in her

would be reaped by the family she’s

married into

and not to themselves but investments

early in life

as we all know determined potential for

the girls for years to come

and it seemed that cultural norms and

traditions were holding women back

back at that negative 10 meter line and

unless we started to see their worth

see women’s worth see their economic

value and their benefit to society and

the household clearly

it was unlikely that things would change

now today less than 23 percent of indian

women

are employed formally and this statistic

is even lower in urban areas and

actually quite falling

so women are already not employed much

we can’t afford further joblessness this

would have

huge repercussions on our economy our

women have as much potential as women

around the world

but it is unrealized it goes wasted

because their skills their low skills

are no match

for the world and of the future today

and

in the future so what we need to do

first is to bring

these women with incredible potential at

par

with others in their generation around

the world

we need to support them to be at a fair

game that is first providing them with

the basic amenities they need to grow

the tools that they need to understand

how to learn and how technology works

but teaching girls in slums about

technology when they don’t have access

to it and are falling sick

all the time and they don’t have a

teacher or school to go to or

have toilets to relieve themselves or

have pads to use

then we are not playing fairly with them

of course

they won’t be able to pick up the skills

as well as someone who has the basics

taken care of

so we provide better learning

environments and then watch as they take

flight

so we need to first provide them with

these basic amenities

and then two we need to skill or reskill

them

we need to help them adapt to

technological advancements and

use it for their benefit we’ve seen

people in slums in nairobi in kenya

and in rio in in brazil who are getting

online part-time jobs

and they’re able to use them to help to

earn their way

out of poverty entirely moving out of

the slum it is possible

to use technology to shift incomes

upwards

and do this not just for the white

collar workers but also for the blue

collar jobs

if instead of training our women in

manufacturing textiles alone

or in similar such industries which we

know that machines are so likely to take

over entirely

we need to train our women in

communication leadership and judgment

and thinking skills and

vocational skills of the future

technology will actually allow women to

take up jobs with

flexible hours where they can balance

work and home

which is not possible today in the slums

so after a lot of years of learning

being an activist

lots of listening i founded men and

hillar

an organization to get girls and women

to speak up

like the chatty mena bird speak up

against cultural norms and taboos

and be able to use opportunities to

succeed in life

all our efforts try to push the needle

and hand old women from this negative

tend to baseline

when they are more ready to take on

their peers both

other girls and boys and compete at par

when women and men can stand at the same

baseline

men respect women as their equals

and most importantly women have more

courage to evade the additional hurdles

on their track

and remove these hurdles for other women

permanently

i want to give a simple example here at

madame hillary we started to notice that

as women started to come to our

women-only centers and get pad packets

from us

or buy underwear from us they would be

very open about it while they’re in the

center they’d feel

safe and they’d like be very open about

what they’re saying and how they’re

messaging

but when they start walking back home

they would still wrap

up their pad packets in their dupatta we

never gave the pad packets to them in

layers of newspaper or in a black bag

that they would normally

use to cover them and so the girls would

feel kind of exposed

and they’d feel like no no this is

beyond my dignity and we kept asking the

girls

to be comfortable carrying them around

publicly without shame but they just

couldn’t get themselves to doing it

that pervasive idea that a woman could

be caught carrying pads

was such a matter of dignity that

unknowingly women were being held

back structurally by societal norms

and we don’t even realize it how many

such

norms are holding us back so at mena we

then decided to design our pad packets

to look like bread packets

and we told women to think about them as

if they’re carrying some regular grocery

like bread

and women actually started to to feel

more comfortable they started carrying

it more publicly and more openly

and at first we thought maybe it’s just

going to be with our pads then but we

slowly started to see that once

as the women are starting to get exposed

to this concept of carrying pad packets

openly

it breaks the ice it it exposes them to

a new norm

that now they’re comfortable carrying

any pad packet publicly

the change happens this change happens

over time

during our health education sessions at

mena we often ask the girls whether they

thought that boys would hide pad

packets the same way that girls do if

boys had periods instead and they all

said

unanimously no of course not boys would

never hide

and that’s when we realized together it

really wasn’t about

a period it wasn’t a period thing it was

a girl thing

it was because a girl had periods that

she was ashamed

it wasn’t that a period on its own was

shameful

and that is an important lesson

it’s about making a woman confident in

who she is giving her exposure to facts

to accurate information and different

norms where she can then choose which

norm

she wants to live by making it her own

decision

that would get her to the baseline

now unfortunately during covet 19 we’ve

learned a lot of lessons

where actually we’ve seen that women

have been pushed even further behind

negative 10 to negative 15. they’re

suffering increased violence against

them at home

there’s worse mental health physical

outcomes

there’s higher burden of child care

there’s more homeschooling

people are losing jobs for themselves

and their families

and so this pressing time really calls

for pause and reflection around women’s

health

work and well-being followed by clear

action

what is that hundred meter mark what is

that finish line for the women’s health

and work agenda for the time being

what are we all racing towards

are critical grounding questions for us

at mena mahila

vena mahila foundation has just

completed more than five and a half

years of service

and during this time we’ve achieved some

we failed some

though always learning and improving

we’ve reached more than half a million

women at the doorstep

in schools and colleges and slums

providing menstrual hygiene products

education and awareness across some of

the most dense urban slums

in mumbai we have supported more than

five thousand particularly vulnerable

girls

where there are girls who are orphans

single-parent households long-term

illness patients

we’ve helped these girls through their

menstrual cycles with products

knowledge and mentorship we’ve launched

bad parades where girls women

boys and men parade the streets of

mumbai chanting slogans to debunk period

taboos

and to encourage chemist shops and

shopkeepers to stop wrapping pad packets

in newspaper

we’ve employed women whose lives have

been transformed

going from really not being able to see

a future for themselves and keeping

locked at home to now feeling restless

to get out of the house and do something

we’ve encouraged men worked with so many

boys and men who’ve become our male

champions for this cause and are

supporting other women get on board

other men get on board we’ve met the

queen we’ve been to the royal wedding

we’ve been supported by meghan markle

and prince harry

we’ve been awarded by a couple of

different recognitions

all of which have really helped share

our story to inspire others

even during the pandemic we have

continued providing service

furiously fighting for women’s rights

we’ve helped create permanent behavior

change

mindset change and attitude change and

perhaps

that’s what we’re most proud of

there are and there will continue to be

times of failure

when girls we support aren’t able to

come back to us when they’re married off

and we see their futures

withering away as we stand helpless when

we struggle to gain community trust

especially from religious leaders when

we feel we have failed our women

as we get shackled by resource

constraints ourselves

where no matter how hard we try or how

much we want to do things we just

sometimes don’t have the capacity to do

so or the skills or sometimes

even just systematic support

this is a winding road and we knew that

going in

that the problem of women’s health

inequality and work inequality

cannot be solved by a single

organization

it needs to be a movement it needs to be

a sectoral change and it humbles us

to just see how much more this movement

has to accomplish and all of us together

but in all that we do at mena mahila we

have learned so much

and we have improved what we do and how

we do it so we can serve better and

serve as a springboard for other

organizations

it wouldn’t be progress if mena was

still doing today what it started doing

in 2015. over the next

five years mena mahila will divide into

three distinct

but interconnected divisions all enabled

by technology solutions

to help us reach women from their homes

in addition

to reaching them through our women-only

centers

when a health men i employ and men our

research

are three verticals mena health

pushes women from this negative 10

meters to zero meters

the baseline and then aims to reach and

shift health behavior for two million

women over the next

five years men i employ

creates further employment and

entrepreneurial opportunities and

provides skilling for women

including home-based gig economy jobs

that are propelling women

from the baseline towards the finish

line

mena research develops a strong impact

evaluation arm

to mana’s other two units and pilots

experimental

auditious programs and there’s a lot

that we can do you and i to ensure

our people are future ready i appeal for

volunteers to spend time and resources

to train the unskilled

let’s help technology lift everyone up

we need to make sure that those left

behind today are

not left behind tomorrow

we need to create jobs for the future

for the women who have

immense potential and are ready to

exercise it let’s

build the platforms to get them to that

hundred meter line

so at mena mahila we are trying to make

our women future ready

we urge you to think about how you can

use your talents

and skills to make the next generation

future ready to

imagine if your company’s employees

spent a hundred hours of their time

every year helping reskill people

reskill women it would be a

massive undertaking with long lasting

impact

let’s pull together our skills and

knowledge

and volunteer our time to reskill and

upskill our women

with the focus on women we would change

the paradigm and inspire women to take

on non-traditional roles

yet we need to be providing jobs for the

future

but now we need to do it in simple steps

in india

it starts with helping people to come to

the level playing field

it could start with providing a woman

with a single pad

a single toilet an hour of your time

re-skilling lifting women up

is an auditious dream in 2020

unfortunately it really shouldn’t be but

it is

i’m excited though that today we are

here building a community to discuss

just what we’re aiming for

and actively accounting for how this

pandemic can alter our goals

but if we know where our girls are

standing and that the first goal is to

get them to that baseline

and that our final goal is then to get

them to that hundred meter mark

on the racetrack i am convinced that we

can create a world where she has the

courage to take charge of her body

reveal the fire in her eyes and take the

world by her force

this is important because women matter

they matter for you for me

for your family your society the economy

and the world so let’s do it

thank you

[Music]

you