Ecofeminism fights the double bind of patriarchy and capitalism
Social inequality – especially patriarchy – is a huge obstacle in the global fight against climate change.
Shocking statistics suggest that as many as 65% of Kenyan women cannot afford menstrual products. Nyungu, a Kenyan ecofeminist startup, is developing a non-toxic, recyclable sanitary pad. Their mission is to end period poverty, and that work goes far beyond introducing an affordable, sustainable product into the local market.
Founder Mary Nyaruai travels across rural Kenya engaging with and educating locals to change cultural attitudes that hold women and girls back. She spoke to Måndag about how there is no viable sustainable future without ecofeminism.
When the news broke that Nestle sells baby formula with added sugar only in Africa and not the West, we were reminded of the last time an international company was exposed for selling poor quality products exclusively to African markets.
In 2019, the Twitter hashtag #MyAlwaysExperience trended in Kenya and then in South Africa when women shared their stories of how toxic menstrual pads sold by the Always brand were damaging their health. They described the painful rashes, itching, burning and open wounds they suffered while on their menstrual cycles. Procter & Gamble, who owns Always, holds a near-monopoly in Kenya’s sanitary product market. While the company made moves to avert the PR disaster, like a closed-door meeting with the woman who started the hashtag, they made no commitment to investigating or improving the product.
Both revelations about Nestle and Always show clearly how African women are oppressed under the double bind of patriarchy and capitalism.
Always pads, subpar as they are, are still a luxury that the vast majority of menstruating women in Kenya can’t afford. In addition, there’s a lot of stigma towards menstruation and women’s bodies. Period poverty – the lack of access to sanitary products – is still a major cause of girls’ absenteeism from school.
Around the time of #MyAlwaysExperience, Mary Nyaruai had started using her social media to talk about destigmatising women’s bodies and sexuality.
“I called myself a vagina activist and started a campaign called ‘Letters to my vagina.’ Women from all over Africa sent letters sharing what they would like to tell their vaginas.”
Mary says that before the #MyAlwaysExperience, she thought it was normal to apply petroleum jelly to prevent rashes when she used Always pads. When she learned that it wasn’t, she started doing her own research. She reached out to brands in the US, who sent her their products to use. The difference shocked her.
“One of them was infused with aloe vera and felt so fresh and cool. These were the things we’d been denied all of this time! I actually got angry. And that frustration pushed me to research sustainable materials.”
Mary learned from her grandmother that women used to make menstrual pads out of softened banana leaves.
“I realised that nature has the solution to all of our problems, and that’s amazing.”
Mary lives in Tikka, a small industrial town known as the pineapple capital of Kenya. Pineapple farming and processing is one of its major industries. She worked with a material scientist on using pineapple leaves to make the pads. Nyungu is also working with the Kenyan government on policy changes that promote access to sanitary products and on consumer quality standards and guidelines for sustainable sanitaryware.
Nyungu’s wholistic approach that includes activism, science and education is ecofeminism in action. Ecofeminism seeks to challenge systems of power that exploit both women and nature, through a holistic and equitable approach to social and environmental justice. One of the ways Africa is going to lead the global fight against climate change is moving beyond an over-focus on consumer products as solutions.
Western startup culture prioritises innovations like electric vehicles, decarbonisation technologies and green energy sources – ignoring the fact that the capitalist drive to constantly create and sell new products is what plunged the world into its current sustainability crisis.
The conduct of global companies like Procter & Gamble and Nestle exposes the fact that a profit-driven system has no real value for the lives of women and children, especially on the African continent. The problem and the solution cannot come from one source.
Mary’s vision is to expand Nyungu’s work far beyond Kenya’s borders, to the rest of the continent. When she first started visiting villages, she would have gatherings with the women only. Then she realised it’s more effective to include men, whose ignorance of women’s bodies perpetuates menstruation stigma.
“The biggest change we want to see is a mindset change. Especially attitudes towards girls and also how women and girls accept themselves, how they take up space. That’s the real work because once they are able to do that, they will start aligning themselves with behaviours or products that speak to them like that.”
Mary Nyaruai
Activist, Founder of Nyungu Afrika