The Pad Men
This week, I’m going to share an eye-opening article: India's women given low-cost route to sanitary protection. Why I choose this article? First, I’m not only interested in information studies related to children and youth, but I also want to explore research topics on the minority groups, such as female and indigenous people. Align with the post of last week, this article is related to women empowerment. Second, sounds really silly, I was in my period when choosing the article for this week, so, the title grabs my eyes!
This is an impressive story started with love, struggled with misunderstandings, and finally succeed in innovation. It’s a story about a men lives in a poor area in India who raises a revolution of women’s everyday life. He shared his story at TED talk at Bangalore in 2014.
Back to a decade ago, an Indian worker, Arunachalam Muruganantham discovered his wife use dirty cloth for her period. He was astonished because even he would never use that kind of cloth to clean his scooter. This astonishment motivated him to develop period towels with better quality for her wife. However, at the very beginning, NO ONE (include his wife, his sister, and even his mom) was willing to try his product. Then he started to test the towel by himself by putting goat blood on the towel and wearing the towel. And he even “distributed the towels free and asked women to return the used ones.” After thousands of trials and errors, he found a useable material, and then developed a simple version of a sanitary pad machine. This machine won the best innovation for the betterment of society from the Indian Institute of Technology. He continues making the machines and training women in poor areas in India to use the machine to make pads and sell these low-cost pads. This not only greatly improve the health condition for women during their periods, but provide financial supports of the female workers who make pads. His story later inspired a film, Pad Men. (See more stories here: The rural Indian inventor whose machine to make sanitary pads shattered a taboo and inspired a film, Pad Man.)
I would like to share my opinions from two aspects after reading this story. First, innovation should always take social norms into consideration. In Purtik & Arenas (2017), the authors analyze four cases of innovations on environmentally friendly products and services. They stated that physical experiences and positive emotions plays a particularly important role during the process that people adopt new products. As more and more people involve in using new products/technologies, the power of this innovation may gradually shape the societal norms and behaviors. Muruganantham wanted his wife to use a clean towel during her period. It sounds a behavior out of care and love. Why he was rejected by his wife? Because he did not consider the social norm and female’s feelings enough. In Dhillon’s article, we can see that women’s period is somehow a “forbidden” topic to discuss in many areas. Even women themselves may be shy to talk about their period, it’s not hard to imagine that women felt uncomfortable and weird when Muruganantham approached to them for his idea. Muruganantham’s family finally accepted his idea after he won the innovation price. However, how if he failed to produce the low-cost pad even after thousands of tests? Unger that social norm, I even assumed that females who knew him (or had been asked to try his product) may still persist in the traditional way to deal with their period and reluctant to try good period pads when someone else (maybe from the western manufactures) introduce these products to them. If this happened, then there might be negative impacts to the society, and even influence the perception and openness to attempts of further innovation (Twerenbold, 2017). Under this norm, if he can started to talk to his wife about her health and gradually approached to the period topic, his wife might be less reluctant to accept his idea. Then maybe his wife can help him to talk to other females.
Second, good innovations should provide positive impacts for marginalized groups ‘empowerment (Malhotra, Schulte, Patel, & Petesch, 2009). Although Muruganantham seemed a bit too rash to test his product without carefully considered the conservative social norm, his innovation motivated from empowering females around him and got a huge success in the end. Moreover, he refused to sell this innovation to the corporate world: "I didn't take the money route because I saw my parents struggle for survival. I knew that this machine could provide a sustainable livelihood for many rural women." This action is very impressive and admirable. As mentioned by the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) in United Nations in a meeting in October, 2011, “Without women’s empowerment and gender equality, societies will not be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and their full development potential.” Muruganantham’s innovation indeed empowers women’s wellbeing in terms of health, and economic opportunities in rural areas in India.
References:
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| Source: https://goo.gl/images/1B3ChW |
This is an impressive story started with love, struggled with misunderstandings, and finally succeed in innovation. It’s a story about a men lives in a poor area in India who raises a revolution of women’s everyday life. He shared his story at TED talk at Bangalore in 2014.
Back to a decade ago, an Indian worker, Arunachalam Muruganantham discovered his wife use dirty cloth for her period. He was astonished because even he would never use that kind of cloth to clean his scooter. This astonishment motivated him to develop period towels with better quality for her wife. However, at the very beginning, NO ONE (include his wife, his sister, and even his mom) was willing to try his product. Then he started to test the towel by himself by putting goat blood on the towel and wearing the towel. And he even “distributed the towels free and asked women to return the used ones.” After thousands of trials and errors, he found a useable material, and then developed a simple version of a sanitary pad machine. This machine won the best innovation for the betterment of society from the Indian Institute of Technology. He continues making the machines and training women in poor areas in India to use the machine to make pads and sell these low-cost pads. This not only greatly improve the health condition for women during their periods, but provide financial supports of the female workers who make pads. His story later inspired a film, Pad Men. (See more stories here: The rural Indian inventor whose machine to make sanitary pads shattered a taboo and inspired a film, Pad Man.)
I would like to share my opinions from two aspects after reading this story. First, innovation should always take social norms into consideration. In Purtik & Arenas (2017), the authors analyze four cases of innovations on environmentally friendly products and services. They stated that physical experiences and positive emotions plays a particularly important role during the process that people adopt new products. As more and more people involve in using new products/technologies, the power of this innovation may gradually shape the societal norms and behaviors. Muruganantham wanted his wife to use a clean towel during her period. It sounds a behavior out of care and love. Why he was rejected by his wife? Because he did not consider the social norm and female’s feelings enough. In Dhillon’s article, we can see that women’s period is somehow a “forbidden” topic to discuss in many areas. Even women themselves may be shy to talk about their period, it’s not hard to imagine that women felt uncomfortable and weird when Muruganantham approached to them for his idea. Muruganantham’s family finally accepted his idea after he won the innovation price. However, how if he failed to produce the low-cost pad even after thousands of tests? Unger that social norm, I even assumed that females who knew him (or had been asked to try his product) may still persist in the traditional way to deal with their period and reluctant to try good period pads when someone else (maybe from the western manufactures) introduce these products to them. If this happened, then there might be negative impacts to the society, and even influence the perception and openness to attempts of further innovation (Twerenbold, 2017). Under this norm, if he can started to talk to his wife about her health and gradually approached to the period topic, his wife might be less reluctant to accept his idea. Then maybe his wife can help him to talk to other females.
Second, good innovations should provide positive impacts for marginalized groups ‘empowerment (Malhotra, Schulte, Patel, & Petesch, 2009). Although Muruganantham seemed a bit too rash to test his product without carefully considered the conservative social norm, his innovation motivated from empowering females around him and got a huge success in the end. Moreover, he refused to sell this innovation to the corporate world: "I didn't take the money route because I saw my parents struggle for survival. I knew that this machine could provide a sustainable livelihood for many rural women." This action is very impressive and admirable. As mentioned by the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) in United Nations in a meeting in October, 2011, “Without women’s empowerment and gender equality, societies will not be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and their full development potential.” Muruganantham’s innovation indeed empowers women’s wellbeing in terms of health, and economic opportunities in rural areas in India.
References:
- Dhillon, A. (2018, Feb 17). The rural Indian inventor whose machine to make sanitary pads shattered a taboo and inspired a film, Pad Man. Health and wellness.
- Malhotra, A., Schulte, J., Patel, P., & Petesch, P. (2009). Innovation for womens empowerment and gender equality. International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).
- Muruganantham, A. (2014, Apr 24). How I started a sanitary napkin revolution! TED@Bangalore
- Purtik, H., & Arenas, D. (2017). Embedding social innovation: shaping societal norms and behaviors throughout the innovation process. Business & Society,1-40.
- Sandhana, L. (2012, Jan 12). India's women given low-cost route to sanitary protection. The Observer.
- Twerenbold, R. (2017, Mar, 2). The good, the bad and the innovative: understanding the darker side of innovation for development. United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
- United Nations. (2011, Oct 11). With equal rights, empowerment, women can be ‘agents of change’ for sustained socio-economic development, security around world, third committee told. Sixty-sixth General Assembly, Third Committee, 11th & 12th Meetings.
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