Prachi Gor

MPS Fashion Management

Title: Fashionable Flow: Menstrual hygiene of garment factory workers in India

Updated: August 22nd

One of the first ways to deal with menstrual blood was ‘cloth bandages’. Eventually, the mainstreaming of period products meant women could take more control of their autonomy, allowing them to go to work. But even today, despite having plenty of product alternatives, the majority of women in India are stuck with this ‘cloth’ and menstrual stigma, due to lack of access, education & policies. This is because the phenomenon of menstruation has been heavily shadowed by myths and taboos over the years. Globally, women make up half the world’s population (49.58%, 3.7 billion, World Bank, 2019); and therefore the normalization of the subject of menstruation even more necessary and important.

The global fashion industry is one that relies on a complex supply chain which includes a large amount of human capital at it’s beginning, largely consisting of women in third world countries. In India, the ready-made garment sector directly employs 12.9 million individuals in formal factory settings. Despite being the world’s second-largest manufacturer of textiles and garments after China, the country struggles to provide for and deal with the health issues of the industry’s driving workforce. The rise of global consumption of fast fashion with 52 seasons a year has led to a massive amount of increase in new garments every year. With demand going up in the western world, the product price goes drastically low and puts all the pressure on cheap labor in third world countries for better prices. Every year, global brands spend billions of dollars on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which proves to be an asset for them. In the past, many CSR campaigns have involved and impacted women worker’s health and women worker’s rights across the supply chain. However, the massive umbrella of worker’s health can be a hit-or-miss as it often doesn’t pin down challenging issues such as that of menstrual hygiene in garment factories.

There is a strong intersection between menstruation, women, and fashion’s complex supply chain. Realizing this led to an opportunity of exploring the key issues related to the menstrual hygiene of women garment factory workers in India in the context of the global fashion industry. It starts by asking “What are the three key areas that need to be analyzed to tackle the issue of menstrual hygiene in garment factories in India?”

Please find attached below the entire research paper written as part of an 11-week Capstone

Prachi Gor is a textile designer and a content creator from Mumbai, India. She recently graduated from Parsons School of Design with a Masters in Fashion Management. She is a Millenial who is creative at heart, passionately into social media, & mostly an enthusiastic, hard-working human. Her work is an intersection between Design, Fashion, & Research which has human connection and stories at its core.