Sitting with mothers in Larkana we heard the thing no report had written down: the first period wasn't a health event, it was a marriage signal. 89% of them said so. If we'd only handed out pads we'd have made girls more comfortable on the way to a wedding at eleven. So we took the findings to every stage that would have us — and said the word "period" into microphones in a country that banned a film for it.
Menarche = marriage. Across Larkana, Shahdadkot and Sukkur, 89% of the mothers we surveyed believed a girl’s first period — at nine, ten, eleven — made her ready for marriage. 72% said it meant the hijab and housework. 11% told their daughters to hide it so they wouldn’t be married off. Nobody in the global north’s period-poverty literature was talking about this. We did — to AWID, to the press, to anyone with a stage.
The Last Menstruators — a podcast on disability and menstruation in South Asia. Webinars on trans men and periods, menstruation and the pandemic, sustainability and the hymen myth. A Pakistan Period Poverty Index dashboard to map product access and myths district by district so government and brands could stop guessing.
And the loud part: She Loves Tech Pakistan, first place. UNICEF’s Menstrual Hygiene Management Innovation Challenge. TechBBQ, WOW Festival Nepal, IFACCA. Every stage was a chance to say the word "period" into a microphone in a country that bans films about it.