Without water or towels, this is how women in Mexican prisons experience menstruation

To attend to their menstruation, at least 21% of women womenis in prison they do not have access to sanitary pads and 80% do not have drinking water inside the prisons.

According to the Diagnostic Report on the Living Conditions of Women Deprived of Liberty prepared by the CNDH, many penitentiary centers in Mexico do not have supplies available for the menstrual management such as soap, cleaning products, towel deposits, pain relievers, sanitary napkins and even drinking water.

The women deprived of their liberty represent a vulnerable sector in terms of their sexual and reproductive rights despite the fact that there are 12 thousand 577 people distributed in the different penitentiary centers of the country.

no budget

Without water or towels, this is how women in Mexican prisons experience menstruation. Photo: Darkroom

There are many items that the state provides to the women deprived of their freedom, however, many times the items are not delivered under the argument of insufficient budget, this is the case of sanitary napkins, as Hilda Téllez comments, advocate and current general director of complaints of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (CONAPRED).

“When there is no budget and no donations, many women use what they have on hand to cover their basic needs, newspaper, put on sponges from the mats that suddenly tear off and place them as if they were earplugs, clothes, socks, a lot of worrisome things.” comments the lawyer in the framework of the Seminar Conditions of Women in Prison organized by Women in Spiral AC

In Mexico there are 251 penitentiary centers, of which only 107 provide free sanitary napkins according to information from INEGI, which means that more than half of the women who live in prisons have to find a way to manage their menstrual cycles each month.

This taking into account that the expenses in sanitary towels, the CNDH records that the prices of this input can be more expensive than abroad, so the expenses can amount to 50 pesos per month considering that the most frequent income being women in confinement is 100 pesos a month, which means that they allocate up to 50% of their income for this purchase.

Prisons without ensuring dignified menstruation

There are currently no legal backing for the women deprived of liberty in terms of comprehensive access to their sexual and reproductive rights, despite the fact that institutions and civil organizations in defense of human rights recommend that it is necessary to provide vulnerable women with dignified menstrual management.

Only in some areas does the State provide inputs for a menstruation comfortable and safe, a precedent is the State of Morelos, which provides this service in basic level schools, however, this is still a reality that is a bit distant in terms of pressures.

“We want specific budgets to be established, but we also want sanitary towels to be offered free of charge, in addition to regularizing the prices of towels inside prisons, which can be four times more expensive than if you bought them in freedom, the same a package in a pharmacy that normally costs 18 pesos, in a prison it can cost 40 pesos”. shares the lawyer when talking about the irregularities within the prisons.

There have also been legal initiatives to try to make the menstruation a fundamental right for womenSenator Verónica Delgadillo García of the Movimiento Ciudadano parliamentary group presented the proposal to reform the General Law of Education and the General Law of Health and Menstrual Hygiene, and thus place menstruation as a right in terms of health, however there has not been no progress.

“It is an issue of social justice for women, it is something that should be considered at least, it has always been one of the great absences within the systems” adds the lawyer Hilda Téllez.