Meet the Parents: Impact of a Menstrual Health Intervention on Parental Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Towards Menstrual Taboos in Rural Bangladesh

Adolescent girls in Bangladesh and many other places in the world are subject to social and cultural norms regarding menstruation that prohibit partaking in every-day activities. We find the Ritu program has a strong effect on changing self-reported explicit attitudes among parents: parents in the treatment group are more likely to agree that menstruating girls should be able to cook, play with friends, eat white foods and wash clothes. We also find they are more likely to report their own daughter(s) are allowed to undertake these activities during their period. Implicit attitudes as measured by our IAT are unaffected by the Ritu program. Even while implicit attitudes stay unchanged, conscious (explicit) beliefs about the ability and effectiveness of supporting girls during their menstruation and sending girls to school (among other things) clearly adapt in response to the Ritu intervention. This can at least partially explain the observed improvements in outcomes related to school attendance and psychosocial wellbeing.

Our findings provide some of the first robust evidence of the role of (public) menstrual health programs like Ritu on parental attitudes that possibly provide a first step towards mitigating adverse outcomes for adolescent girls.