Indigenous girls in remote areas skip school because they lack pads and tampons

Survey finds cost, lack of privacy, shame and a lack of health education mean many girls and women go without

Girls in remote Indigenous communities are staying home from school each month because they do not have access to tampons and pads, a new survey has found.

The survey by the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute found that toilets in many remote schools did not have a bin in the cubicle, which meant girls could not privately dispose of sanitary items.

It also found that the cost of pads, which could be up to $10 a packet in community stores, combined with shame associated with buying sanitary products and a lack of health education, meant many girls and women went without.

The institute’s sustainable water program manager, Dr Nina Hall, said she was shocked by the findings, which came out of interviews with 17 people working in remote Indigenous communities across Australia in Indigenous, non-government, government and research sectors.

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The purpose of the research was to measure Australia against United Nations sustainable development goal six, which stipulates access to water and sanitation for all. In 2013 Australia committed to implementing this goal by 2030.

Hall cautioned that the findings were not extensive, intended as a surface look at sanitation issues at play in remote communities, but said the trend was “very worrying”.

Most remote communities canvassed also experienced overcrowding, poor infrastructure, inadequate health resources, and generally poor sanitation. Cultural taboos around both underwear and menstruation meant women and girls attempted to hide their bodily functions in an overcrowded house.

A contributing factor was reliance on bore water, which calcified the pipes, ruined washing machines, and left taps either stuck open or stuck off.

Hall heard stories of plumbers having to remove whole pieces of clothing, pieces of cloth, and underwear from sewerage systems after it had been used in lieu of sanitary products and flushed away.

“If you have got stained underwear you either wash it privately in a private place, or you wear it wet, or you throw it out,” she said.

“[Because of the calcified taps] you might even find it hard to turn on the tap to wash your underwear, even if you could find somewhere that is private and you have soap.”

One Indigenous respondent said they had been told by mothers and grandmothers in a remote community that girls were missing school “because they don’t want to change [pads] at school”.

“In terms of infrastructure that I can put in place to help girl, it’s rubbish bins, it’s soap, it’s running water and toilets that flush, and privacy,” they said.

Another Indigenous respondent told researchers that the cost and shame of sanitary items prevented women from buying them.

“Access to pads can be really expensive at local shops: $10 a packet … There are cases of women stealing – who would never normally steal – but they’re just so embarrassed that they steal pads,” they said.

In 2015 an Aboriginal woman in the small outback West Australian town of Coolgardie, near Kalgoorlie, was fined $500 for stealing a $6.75 box of tampons from a service station.

Hall said the solution was not as simple as providing women and girls in remote communities with sanitary products and sanitary bins, or providing discrete funding to address one issue, because most sanitation and health issues in remote communities were interlinked and went back to the adequacy of the housing.

Those issues also contribute to the continued existence of trachoma in remote Indigenous communities. Australia is the only developed country in the world that continues to grapple with trachoma, a form of blindness that can be prevented through regular face washing.

“Yes, people know to wash their hands with soap, but who is buying the soap, where is that soap when they need it, why won’t the tap turn on, how many people are in the house?” she said.

“If you have 20 people in a house, you might buy soap on payday but by next payday it’s gone.”

Hall said the problems and their solutions had been identified in 1985 by Healthhabitat, an organisation founded by the late architect Paul Pholeros, Dr Paul Torzillo and Stephan Rainow, and confirmed in the 1987 Uwankara Palyanyku Kanyintjaku report.

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Healthhabitat found the single most significant change Aboriginal people living on country in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara lands in northern South Australia could do to improve their health was to wash daily, and set out to make sure houses in remote communities actually had working showers. Most didn’t.

Hall said there had been little change over 30 years.

“The optimistic part is these are not issues without solutions,” she said.