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