No data shows 1 in 10 African girls miss school because of menstruation
Published on 26 September 2016
This article is more than 6 years old
We know for sure that 7 million South African girls don’t miss school every month due to a lack of sanitary pads. Our recent fact-check showed that at most around 2.6 million girls could be affected.
What about the rest of the continent?
A “widely cited” statistic claims that “one in 10 school-age girls in Africa misses school or drops out for reasons related to her period”.
“From what we’ve seen this seems to be a case of UNICEF being misquoted, or misattributed,” UNICEF press officer Rita Ann Wallace told Africa Check.
“According to our statistics team, unfortunately data on menstrual hygiene management including for adolescent girls remains scarce.”
Where did UNESCO find the statistic then? The organisation's communications and advocacy project officer for health and education, Cara Delmas, is stumped too.
“Unfortunately, it seems that no one knows where this number comes from,” she told Africa Check.
“According to the advice I have received, there isn’t a lot of good data on this issue.”
‘Very limited rigorous research’
A worker creates low cost sanitary pads from locally-produced banana fibres in Ngoma, Rwanda, in March 2015. Photo: AFP/STÉPHANIE AGLIETTI" />
“There is very limited rigorous research on absenteeism as it is complicated to capture in an accurate way,” associate professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University, Marni Sommer, told Africa Check.
There have been a number of small-scale studies conducted in African countries, which have found varying effects of menstruation on girls’ school attendance.
A 2008/09 study conducted in Ghana’s capital city Accra and the western, central, upper east and Ashanti region found that 95.2% of girls in rural villages and 20.2% of girls in peri-urban villages reported having missed school due to of menstruation.
A 2013 study found that 35% of surveyed girls in Niger and 21% of surveyed girls in Burkina Faso reported “sometimes” missing school during menstruation.
A tenth of 319 Sierra Leonean school girls surveyed in 2012 reported that they had missed school in the last three months due to menstruation. On average they reported missing 4.2 days per month. The most common reported reasons for missing school were “pain, fear of leakage and shame”.
While these studies provide useful insights into the communities they surveyed, they cannot provide insight into the situation on the continent.
Effects of menstruation hard to measure
A study in rural Malawi used data from the Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Survey to estimate that 0.5% of the 179 school girls surveyed were absent due to menstruation on the last school day before the survey. Fourteen girls (7.8%) reported having missed school since the beginning of the school year due to menstruation.
The results from the Malawian study were lower than the researchers expected. They think this could be due to “both the potential embarrassment of revealing something so private to the interviewer and the way this question was asked”.
They also suggest that girls may have reported missing school for health reasons - such as being sick - instead of disclosing that it was due to menstruation.
They go on to say that “if menstruation does indeed affect school attendance for girls, other factors that contribute to absenteeism are more prominent for boys”.
Conclusion: No research supports ‘widely cited’ claim
The widely cited claim that 1 in 10 school-age girls in Africa miss school due to menstruation is unfounded.
The statistic is often attributed to UNICEF and UNESCO but both organisations said they were not sure of its original source.
A number of small local studies in African countries have shown varying degrees of absenteeism due to menstruation. But the studies are not representative of the continent as a whole.
Africa Check tried tracking down the source of this claim. It was tricky - and ultimately unsuccessful.
Africa Check tried tracking down the source of this claim. It was tricky - and ultimately unsuccessful.
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