Cogels, Alexandra
[UCL]
De Jaegere, Tanguy
[UCL]
In recent years, Menstrual Health and Hygiene (MHH) has received growing recognition as a key, under-addressed issue in low-income countries. In India, MHH barriers (e.g. taboos, lack of access to hygienic menstrual protections, lack of appropriate infrastructures etc.) lead to poor menstrual hygiene practices which can be the cause of health-related problems or girls school absenteeism. As a reaction, a plethora of MHH interventions have focused on increasing the access to plastic-based sanitary pads. In a country as populous as India, which lacks robust waste management systems, the increasing adoption of disposable pads generates huge amounts of waste leading to considerable negative outcomes for the environment. The purpose of this thesis is thus to explore a solution to the problems related to MHH in India which combine both a social and an environmental component. Social enterprises commercializing environmentally friendly menstrual products such as Aakar Innovations, Eco-Femme or Saathi, among other, seem to be combining both successfully. However, the scale of the MHH issue raises the question of the extent to which social enterprises can actually have an impact, which leads to this work’s research question: “To what extent can social enterprises commercializing environmentally friendly menstrual products improve the state of Menstrual Health and Hygiene in India”. The qualitative research and the analysis carried out after the literature review, allowed to formulate the conclusion that social enterprises are an important player in the MHH field. In spite this, the extent to which social enterprises can improve MHH is limited.


Bibliographic reference |
Cogels, Alexandra. To what extent can social enterprises commercializing environmentally friendly menstrual products improve Menstrual Health and Hygiene in India?. Louvain School of Management, Université catholique de Louvain, 2021. Prom. : De Jaegere, Tanguy. |
Permanent URL |
http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/thesis:31613 |