Ep 148: Cycles, Connection to the Body and the Earth with Kathy Walkling

Are periods simply a burden for women to bear? Can menstruation education cause systemic change for the better in women's welfare? What are the implications of women revitalizing menstrual practices on society and the earth? 

In this special episode, Effy talks to the co-founder of EcoFemme Kathy Walkling about how rethinking menstruation and menstruation education can cause radical social change in women’s welfare. Kathy explains EcoFemme’s approach to menstruation that is healthy, environmentally sustainable, culturally responsive and empowering and Effy has a profound shift in her relationship with her body and the earth as the conversation unfolds. 

To find out more about Kathy
Kathy Walkling is the co-founder of Eco Femme, a women-led social enterprise working to create environmental and social change by promoting menstrual practices that are healthy, dignified, affordable and eco-positive. Kathy heads Eco Femme’s research and not-for-profit menstrual health education and pad distribution programmes, Pad for Pad and Pads for Sisters. Originally from Australia, Kathy moved to the international community of Auroville in Tamil Nadu, India in 1997. Grounded in Auroville’s commitment to human unity and sustainable living, her passion for care of the earth and the sacred feminine were well-nourished, giving rise to Eco Femme in 2010.

Prior to this, Kathy worked with the Auroville Village Action Group (AVAG), a local grassroots NGO, where she established community-led teaching programmes for children and livelihood programmes for women, in the villages neighboring Auroville. More recently, Kathy has been a core founding member of the Auroville Citizens’ Assembly which successfully launched with a pilot project in early 2021. Kathy is an active member of the Menstrual Health Alliance, India, and completed Dasra‘s Social Impact Leadership Programme in 2014

Throughout her journey, Kathy has been a staunch advocate for empowerment built upon non-judgemental, culturally responsive and accurate education to individuals and prompting critical thinking—in a nutshell, “informed choice”. This approach is about more than menstrual products; it is about supporting individual’s personal transformation and reconnecting with themselves, one another and the environment. Naturally, Kathy cherishes spending time in wild spaces simply“being” and turning within to reflect, question and embrace never-ending learning!

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TRANSCRIPT:

Kathy

The missed opportunity felt to be connected to really unfolding this idea of First of all, in a way examining the worldview around menstruation, like does it have to be such as sort of, you know, just a thing to be managed and concealed and, you know, dealt with in sort of as quickly and as neatly and Mr. Lee as possible. Now, what is the worldview this whole thing's embedded in?

Effy

Welcome to the Curious Fox podcast for those challenging the status quo in love, sex, and relationships. My name is Effy Blue. This week, we're talking about menstruation. But wait, wait, before you switch off because you either think you can't learn anything new about periods. Young, boring topic. Or if you simply don't have them, stick around. You'll be surprised. I was surprised. Jacqueline and I have done over 150 episodes of the show at this point. And we have covered topics ranging from kink to social justice, from radical family law to Tantra. And never have I been so surprised by a conversation. Speaking of my dearest friend and co-host, Jackie, you won't hear from her in this episode. But don't worry, she'll be back. Since the beginning of 2023. I've been traveling around India and Bali. Unfortunately, without Jackie, I wish she was here with me. Alas, I roam solo. Throughout my travels, I have been given the privilege to talk to some incredible people with incredible insights and inspirational projects. And this is one of those episodes, and there'll be more. One more thing before we dive in. While we acknowledge and honor that not everyone who menstruates identifies as a woman, and not everyone who identifies as a woman, men straight. We do use gendered language in this episode, and why we do that becomes apparent along the way. Please trust us that we see you all and support you in your entire being. Okay, let's go back to talking about periods. More precisely how a small social enterprise in South India is focusing on menstruation to cause radical social change in Women's Welfare. Joining me today is

Kathy

so my name is Kathy Walkling from Australia and I've been living in this amazing community of Oroville for 25 years. And I'm the co-founder of eco femme, which is a social enterprise working on the topic of menstruation from multiple perspectives.

Effy

eco femme is a woman led social enterprise founded by Kathy and her co founder Yasmin Medina in 2010. Based in Tamil Nadu, India, that's the very very southern tip of India. Eco femmes goal is to create environmental and social change through revitalizing menstrual practices that are healthy, environmentally sustainable, culturally responsive, and empowering. What they do is to produce and sell washable cloth pads provide menstrual health education, and open dialogues on menstruation along the way. What they are, is a global empowerment initiative, and one of the most gently radical ones I've ever come across. before founding eco femme Kathy was working at an NGO focused on supporting rural women in the region. They were exploring topics to do with gender and caste, which are huge in India. Knowing economic empowerment is one of the real leverages to poor women out of the oppressive conditions they face. They were trying to develop income generating activities they could offer. These women were largely uneducated, didn't have a lot of skills, but they were willing to do something to work. Kathy came up with an idea inspired by a problem she has been trying to solve in a different area of her life. When she moved to India from Australia in the 90s, one of the first things she was confronted with was dealing with her own sanitary waste. Unlike the west where there are containers can be needs replacing bathrooms where you discard your waist and never really think about it again. Kathy was given a shovel and told to go into the jungle to dig a hole to bury her son if you waste I was

Kathy

like to stone by then that gave me this sort of got me questioning when I was using the product service using the use and throw tampons at that time. And I happened to discover a cloth pair, just really homemade unbranded, really just like unpackage it even just sitting in a basket in a corner store in an aisle, like a village store in New Zealand. And I just instinctively bought that product thinking, let me try it. So it was really for me just to try to find a way out of this mess. Deal with digging holes every month situation that I didn't enjoy doing. And when I started to use the cloth pad, it was the kind of epiphany, I found that I really enjoy the experience of using it. It made me question my conditioning around the way I'd sort of had this resistance and in a way bias against menstruation. And so, of course, you have to handle your menstrual blood, it's you wash it, you reuse it. And in the process of doing that I was really intrigued to notice that it it got me thinking about how I've been conditioned around menstruation in a way I could feel that it was a real positive shift that it bought me into a more intimate connection with my menstrual blood that had been previously somewhat distant from using these use and throw products. So I just developed a sort of love affair with cloth pads. Just for my own, I found I really enjoyed to use them. And it was surprised me how subversive I found this little product to be so that's what got me into cloth pads. And I honestly just thought to make them initially for the women here in Oroville, and did that for about 10 years. So So bringing it into the NGO as an income generating activity really came after seeing over those 10 years that actually it wasn't just me that like the product people were buying Avon had different women approached me who'd been visiting Oroville and bought the cloth pen. It's like, oh, can I sell that in Spain and then sell it in England. So I always say became an accidental entrepreneur sort of set out to do that at all. But I was very much sort of surprised to see this uptake of this kind of product. So that's really the I think the combination of my own journey with cloth pads and feeling like it was such a powerful little product that had all these benefits. I mean, cost saving was another and seeing the need for women to find an income generating activity. And they're all busy learning how to stitch them was like putting joining the dots and putting the two together and we thought we'd try it out.

Effy

Soon after starting this enterprise. The NGO Kathy was involved in started to do research to try to understand what kind of education about menstruation was available to girls and women in India.

Kathy

We used our opportunity through this NGO to kind of get out there and do surveys and interviews and focus groups with a lot of women girls from the rural communities. And so we learned that the basic, a few basic things like for example, that there were a lot of kind of cultural expectations around and observances around menstruation. So, you know, we commonly hear about not touching the people, but you know, not going to temple not going in the kitchen, not touching plants. I mean, it varies in different geographies across the country. But there's some really long list of things that women and girls, especially when they attain minarchy, were told this is now you've come of age, you're not supposed to do this, this and this. So this was the education they were being given. It's about the sort of do's and don'ts mostly don't see. And, you know, and as we tried to understand what was behind that, essentially, it appeared to be rooted in this idea that there is you know, menstruating woman is impure, that there's so this idea of pollution connected to menstrual blood. So this was the understanding that they had about the this for themselves, and how it was conveyed to us that, you know, we shouldn't do these things, because bad things will happen. And when we try to go deeper and understand like, what kind of bad things Why would this be a problem? What do you think is the source of that they really didn't have an answer to those kinds of questions. That was just no bad things will happen. And we don't really know why this is what we have to do. This is what I was taught. This is what I pass on to my daughters. So the education was almost entirely confined to this kind of domain of cultural practices. And when it came to getting education around the, for example, the process of what's happening in the body, how does this connect with something like fertility, this was pretty much absent. So that was a big learning curve for us and in a way bit averse sort of shocked to realize just how neglected it was in education. And for girls. To me, it was very interesting, especially in Tamil Nadu, where we're located. And this is again quite common in different parts of India but girls, celebrated at the time of their first menstruation. I have this beings event which the family holds, everybody's invited in the community. And they really sort of celebrated as the goddess, she gets dressed up, and she gets jewels and special food, and then isolated, you know, time to sit in the special place. And so, again, talking to different girls about this experience, it turns out to be quite convincing for many of them, because on the one hand, it's like a mixed message that there's something very special about you now, but they're not allowed to play anymore, they're not allowed to kind of you know, and then there's suddenly there's this kind of different atmosphere after this event in the home, which is a kind of extra protection that they don't have exposure, then to boys and you know, not to go out alone and things like that. So in a way, they understand that the message is that she's now fertile, she's now potentially eligible for marriage, we celebrate it. But we're also afraid of what can happen to the girl there. And so this is the kind of milieu in which this experiences is unfolding here. So yeah, that led us to really kind of think about education, and what are the gaps? To try to understand what was happening? Was it part of mainstream curriculum? If not, you know, where do you start? And so, yeah, then we started to get really interested in, I think, because we sort of realized that this thing, also a fear and shame in many girls, for example, reported that when they first got their period, they didn't even know that it was going to happen. In many cases, they're not even warned that this is happening. So you know, their first impression is, Am I dying? Is there something wrong, and that seemed to be a really sad and unfortunate state of affairs like this is absolutely addressable with some basic information like this doesn't have to happen that those need to feel so overwhelmed and anxious and frightened by the onset of menstruation.

Effy

By the way, given the circumstances, Kathy and her team are doing this work, they feel they have to keep the content as simple and accessible as possible, which, unfortunately means they have to stick to reductive gendered language around this topic. As Kathy and I were reflecting on how traumatic it must be for these girls. I couldn't help but reminisce about my experience. Starting my period, I grew up in a fairly liberal household with a mom that walked around naked and left the bathroom door open. So I've always known at some point, I'll be bleeding. Despite this openness on one side, there really wasn't that much information, education or discussion on the other side, why it happened, what my options were dealing with, it wasn't really discussed, it was mostly presented to me as a burden to bear. I was to use disposable pads and wear dark bottoms in case they leaked. And eventually, when my period did start, so did the slog of dealing with it. I hated my period, they were painful and messy. I hated sneaking off to the bathroom with sanitary products up my sleeve in school, it felt so isolating, I hated what my body was doing to me every month, there was nothing positive about this experience. I was curious what kind of education Kathy got, and how it affected her relationship with her body.

Kathy

It was just almost non existent. It was the kind of you know, I remember very clearly, in fact, one thing we often do in our office in sessions and when visitors come is we have exactly this conversation, like, what was your first period? Like? How were you prepared? And, you know, I realized that I wasn't alone in this. But in my own experience, I remember very clearly, you know, first of all, hiding it the first month, didn't even tell my mother, I was so horrified. And even I sort of knew what it was, but I can't remember ever having it really properly explained what was going on. And then when I came back and realized I had to sort of face it and telling my mother and her just like taking me into the bedroom, you know, pulling out a packet of disposable napkins from the blow of recesses of the cupboard and, and the basic information was, you make sure you wrap it up properly, you put it into big bin, and basically don't let your father or your brother have to deal with the mist and that was sort of veered. And I got the message loud and clear. This was secret. It was something kind of to be ashamed of I felt very kind of uncomfortable. And I just found it was like horrible. Actually, I didn't want to be dealing with this at all. And I was embarrassed. And so yeah, pretty much no education. Yeah. And of course in later years, as I started having conversations with more and more people about that new experience, I realized this was actually not uncommon. I mean, I think this is probably why the journey with a cloth pad for me was so radical and so weirdly emancipatory because I you know, I had this sort of baggage and even though I'd explored so many things in my life around my cultural conditioning and you know around sexuality and shame and You know, I grew up in a family where you know, this catalytic six was really a bit taboo. So I really have done a lot of kind of examining my conditioning, but something with menstruation that like it remained sort of under the carpet. And I, you know, I didn't realize it until I started using the cloth pad just how much of a sort of dark corner this particular aspect of experience was. And so, as I kind of go through my own journey through uncovering my own biases and negative beliefs around it, it really did bring me into a kind of closer contact to my body. And I started to, you know, just just feel more curious myself about what was going on and touching my blood. And yeah, and then, you know, of course, over the years, different things unfolded like, especially as I got more and more into eco film, I think what we started to really get more deeply interested in is for example, in India, how women dealing with menstruation what sort of preparation does the adolescent girl have for menarche, for example. And then being here in Oroville, we had so many foreign visitors coming through. So I started to meet people, women, particularly who identified themselves as minstrel activists was a term that I've never heard until sort of a year or two into echo foo. But I was really kind of excited by that idea of being an activist and taking the topic of menstruation and bringing it into a public arena and talking about it because they started to see the power of these conversations that suddenly, you know, just by bringing it into the open and opening a conversation in a curious and safe way, very intimate aspects of of our lives, we're starting to come out and it was surprisingly rich and tender, and full of, you know, like a lot of stored feelings for so many women. And so I found it. Yeah, it really, I realized I was we were really onto something. This was like a red thread, like literally

Effy

realizing, despite our western privilege, how little education Kathy and I got about menstruation, I started to wonder how to even start the conversation with girls and women in rural India, some of whom don't even know anything about it until they stopped bleeding one day,

Kathy

we just put together, you know, we looked a little bit what was out there, there wasn't much but you know, in a way, it was sort of fairly obvious, like, no, there was sort of basics around the biology, you know, an introduction to, you know, the process of menstruation. But what we also understood was that the way it was, so there was a kind of emerging sector of code, you know, in the water and sanitation and health sector, which was looking at menstrual hygiene management. So the idea being that, you know, we have to educate girls about you know, that you get this period that you're going to have to maintain a certain level of hygiene, washing personal hygiene, and especially about peds. You know, the whole focus of education was peds. That was the centerpiece of it. And we're like, Oh, is that it? Like it just felt like there was such an immense opportunity to go so far beyond that. And so we just started playing around with ideas and experimenting in some of the local schools. And essentially, what we felt was the missed opportunity felt to be connected to really unfolding this idea of festival in a way examining the worldview around menstruation, like, does it have to be such as sort of, you know, just a thing to be managed and concealed and, you know, dealt with in sort of as quickly as neatly and messily as possible, like, what is the worldview this whole thing is embedded in? And you know, through our own explorations and journey, I think in the conversations we're having in the team, we just perceived a much richer potential to go deeper into festival position menstruation in a much wider context of that it's, it's a way in which we can start to examine and reflect on embeddedness within the larger cycles of life. And could that be contextualized in a way that evokes more curiosity and more mystery, and intimacy rather than, you know, just clean it up gold and get it out of everybody's sight. And this was obviously things that we've been seeing emerging in the West, but hadn't seen any real integration of these ideas in India so far. So we tried things out. And I think we gradually built a curriculum that, first of all, I think another idea that was really important is the understanding that anybody who's trying to teach menstrual education, like if they're all bound up in their own negative bias as their own menstruation, that is also what they're going to convey. So we felt that it was really important, that facilitator also does their own inner work to really unpack their own conditioning and negative biases, which we've all absorbed through our culture around instead of greater or less To extend somewhere, it's all there in here we breathe. So first of all, to really look at those questions which we did through, you know, even inquiring into your first experience, and how's your relationship now? And who you do talk to people about a road, you feel shy to? Who do you talk to? Who don't you talk to? Why not. So to really sort of help facilitators of this work to go deep and understand it for themselves, where their, what their relationship is to their own menstrual experience. So that sort of one part of it is just preparedness as the facilitators, because, you know, I think it's pretty fair to say that you know, what, a lot of what you transmit in this kind of work is not even content. It's just what you hold as a facilitator, around sort of posturing and your openness and curiosity and space. So you know, we bought these ideas into our training, both in training trainers, but also how we offered these sessions. And yeah, there was a few things that we started to really explore. So, yeah, unpacking the biases. Yeah. Also this idea that, you know, that that as facilitators, I think part of the model here in India, too, is that there's an expert like, I know, in the beginning, a lot of people would say, shouldn't we call in a doctor or a nurse to do this kind of education, you know, doesn't need an expert lawyer like, no, no. Because actually, anybody who's in a way, in a menstruating body has embodied knowledge, there is lived experience. Now, it doesn't necessarily qualify you as somebody that can, you know, do a training. But essentially, what we really felt important is that we've all got this lived experience inside. And especially in a country that's so large, like Indian with, you know, it's about, I think, something like 350 million, you know, girls and women of reproductive age, it's like, these numbers are phenomenal. And if you know, everyone's going to have to go through the menstrual education session, like what would it look like to also empower girls and women to themselves feel that they can pass this knowledge on and start these conversations, and you know, there's some basic information, how to be healthy, how to look after yourself, you know, what's sort of routine around, changing and stuff. So these were the basics that anyone could convey. But there was also a deeper opportunity. So we've tried through our educational work to encourage you know, girls and women to find their own voice to convey their experience and their learning. So if we're teaching a group, it's like, part of what we do at the very end is also get them to take a pledge and say, I'm going to pass on what I've learned, and to really demystify it from expert knowledge to it starts with a conversation, and what's your experience, he's struggling in various pain, you know, share the sorts of, you know, maybe assemblers or remedies that you know, how you've alleviated pain, get conversations happening. Another thing that we've done is, you know, first of all, just also orientation in the body, like what's actually going on now body and instead of making it all about biology and abstract charts, it's like, let's feel this this source, where is our womb in our Yoni and you know, when we get girls to, for example, put their hand there, make a triangle where it is, feel it feel the size, and to say words like Yoni out loud, you know, when really and this is also something where they're like, oh, you know, really kind of bound in the beginning, but then their voice loosens up. And then role plays, like imagine your younger sister comes to you and says, I've found blood in my panties, you know, how can you advise her and then coaching them through conveying this, the knowledge and also the reassurance and the positive orientation around, you know, might be also difficult. Sometimes there'll be periods, but it's an interesting phenomenon. And it connects us to a deeper experience, which is really also to do with our embeddedness in the largest cycles

Effy

of life. What Cassie and the eco femme team are doing is way more than teaching girls how to manage their periods. They're breaking taboos, sparking connections, enabling dialogues, and nurturing a new layer of camaraderie between sisters and mothers and daughters and communities of girls and women. The more I got to think about this, the more I started to realize how little dialogue there is about this very essentially, female experience, this cornerstone of womanhood, and yes, not all women, men straight, and that is life. Yet, it is the experience of the vast majority of us. And we just don't have these incredibly powerful conversations. I think another

Kathy

piece that we've seen to be really quite transformational and opening is the whole way in which we're addressing the cycle the cyclical phenomenon of menstruation as well. And again, I think often it means more mainstream mainstream education is a focus as the emphasis is on the that phase of bleeding, you know, but actually, it's embedded in the cycle. And, you know, we go through all these different shifts and changes. But you know, we're not taught to, for example, pay attention to these more subtle changes that are happening maybe emotionally. And you know, we're off maybe familiar with terms like PMS, and, you know, the kind of dreaded PMS phase. But actually, when we start to look at menstruation, as part of a larger cyclical phenomenon, and so to really retrain, we also guide them how to track and trace and, and document their own cycle. And this can be as simple as even illiterate women can do it. It's like when you draw, for example, this reference to the moon and say, What cycles are you aware of? So then they start to reflect and, and gradually you build this picture, you know, that all of nature is cyclical, you know, whether it's a lunar cycle, solar cycle or planting cycles, you know, we're embedded in cycles, and hey, we've got this thing going on in our bodies, which is also cyclical. let's ponder that, let's wonder about that. You know, and then, then what about your cycle. So it's a bit like going from this meta cyclical perspective to what about your cycle, it's your unique cycle starts on this day, and then teaching them just the basics of tracker and do this for a few months. And you can of course, you can go way down that rabbit hole room, and go deeply into really documenting, you know, day by day changes. But at a minimum, notice, how am I connecting with this moon cycle, maybe I'm can remember that the full moon happened like three days before I started bleeding, for example, but there's this a connection that a woman, you know, in a village can just look up at the moon and go or that somehow we are connected. And that can be absolutely profound, like I've been really struck by how deep this knowledge can go this awareness and suddenly this thing, which they've thought about as sort of a bit, you know, of a mess to be can kind of cleaned up and concealed and an Out of sight out of mind, it's like, suddenly this doorway opens, where it's like, they're embedded in this larger cycles of nature. And you can always feel the mind being blown, you know, just by contemplating this, and we're not sort of trying to talk them into adopting this particular ideology around it, or you should feel any particular way. It's no, it's really just about feel, what is your experience and lived experience? Notice it ebbs and flows, title changes, you know, this is life. And as in living in cyclical bodies, we are part of this natural world. And something happens when we connect with that, and I, you know, that's been my own lived experience to like, it transformed something. And when becomes more of a felt sense of rather than, you know, like a problem to be solved or you know, something to be ignored, it becomes this doorway into great mystery that we are participating in. And it just becomes an inquiry that goes on and on and on. cycle after cycle.

Effy

While I was in India, I got to talk to a lot of women as I was curious about their experience, as well as being interested in the broader Indian culture. One of the aspects of womanhood that kept coming up was the erasure of individual identity. Women get married very young and most of India, and even before they get married, they are mostly groomed to be wives and mothers and homemakers deeply entrenched into traditional gender roles. When they do get married, they become mostly outwardly focused, they lose their identity as they emerge into the family identity. Their priorities are almost always their husbands, their children, their homes, the reputation of the family, and so on. They almost abandon themselves. What I found so profound about eco homes approach is how they frame menstruation as an anchor to the individual self, a reminder throughout the month of our uniqueness, our individual experience, something these women can come back to and find themselves to take a moment to just be not a wife, not a mom, but a human, in a body separated, yet so deeply connected the essence of nature and life. It's almost a type of meditation. And because eco Pham gets to do this work in schools with young girls, they get to plant the seed of the individual identity in each girl. The seed of the self gets watered and nurtured month after month, connecting women to themselves and to each other, causing gentle, radical social change. I have been so personally moved by this conversation more than I could have imagined. Frankly, I'm still trying to understand why. I think maybe I hadn't realized how negatively of a relationship I had developed with my period and my body in this one aspect, the best way I can describe it is as if I have been unconsciously caring for this wound, by simply putting layers and layers of goes over it forever. And as this conversation unfolded, I got to peel these bloody layers, of course, and expose the wound to fresh air and care for it. With this new understanding, as I did, the wound not only healed, but became a portal of connection to myself to something bigger than myself. As I was having these profound shifts to things were coming up for me, I was curious about what kind of reaction echoes I'm got in the field. And I was starting to realize this is not only a rural India problem,

Kathy

and, you know, again, not everyone takes it on in this with the same sort of enthusiasm. But many do, you know, many do, because we evaluate, and we go back, and we just tried to learn through doing this, because it all has been trial and error, you know, we haven't really had a, you know, roadmap to follow in this work. So we've just experiment. And we've observed, what sort of, you know, reception responses to these approaches, and we're seeing, you know, that these are having deep impact this kind of reflection meditation, as you put it, so we you know, and then we'll, we check, sometimes we go back to communities after a few months, and it's been beautiful to see many of them continue this practice. And in the SEC, something has shifted really profoundly Yeah, of course, there are some that are, you know, maybe like it's, it's a long way from what they've maybe been kind of conditioned with. So it's, you know, it's a bit of a leap to sort of take some of these ideas on. But for the most part, I find the reception to these ideas is quite organic, it's almost as if there's something inside of most of us that resonate deeply, and we're just waiting for permission for someone to say, it is like that you're not making it up, you know, when that you go through this sort of ebbs and flows, actually, also, I think what's super validating for a lot of them is because I had it myself, so there was something wrong because I used to feel like I'd be going kind of mad every month, you know, tree moose, really. And the more I entered into this worldview, the more I found, it was kind of deeply validating, and kind of this like, oh, maybe there's, it's not me, that's a problem. Maybe there's something in our culture that expects this relentless productivity or with inconsistency. And you know, there's a whole doorway into the whole patriarchal culture and the things that you were mentioning, too, that we're expected to be on and for our family, and for everybody else, but, you know, we're not given permission to take our attention inside our own lived embodied experience. So I think for the most part, the response is like, we've just been sort of almost waiting for someone to say it's okay to give this attention. And they say this menstrual experience can be a doorway. Yeah. And one more piece, that's, you know, in terms of range of responses, what's been actually really interesting in India, too, is like, we've worked in all kinds of communities, our work spans, you know, because our commercial pads have sold, you know, to affluent women in, in cities, and also in, you know, we do our work in rural communities with tribal communities, you know, sometimes we've quite communities where they're not even literate. And yet, these are the communities where I get it, like there's an instinctive sense of like, you don't have to, in a way, explain it to them, because they are connected with the earth. They're not the ones that have been disassociated and disconnected. It's the one in the city is like, kind of what are you talking about? And you know, and similarly, with the cloth pads, the product that we make, it's, you know, they're very receptive to the cloth pads. They're mostly wet, it's changing in recent years. And the cloth is still very familiar as a product for menstruation. And so cloth pads is just, you know, an extension of that practice, but with the functionality of LEAP proofing and wings. So, you know, they're like, yeah, they're very, very much appreciating the cloth pad, we have much harder time working with more educated urban women who have more this idea of who isn't that disgusting. And this aversion to menstrual blood and the idea of washing, it can be a real barrier. Yeah. And also like, Oh, we're too busy to do things like that. Like, that's where we get much more pushback than in the rural communities. It's actually really easy.

Effy

As a longtime New Yorker, now living in relatively rural conditions at a citrus grove by the Mediterranean Sea. I could really relate to what Kathy was saying, there would be weeks when I didn't get to see the moon in New York, and now, Scarlet sunsets, all the phases of the moon, the nature changing around me throughout the seasons, the tides are a part of my life. And this has changed the way I see things. Interestingly, I too, had shifted from disposable products to cloth pads. When I left the city, and I wanted to know more about eco femme products, as well as how they structured their commercial side.

Kathy

So the cloth pad product is Yeah, it's so we're a social enterprise. So we have a commercial and non commercial side to what we do. And on the commercial it is the manufacturing sales marketing of cloth pads. And the cloth pen just if anyone doesn't know is sister reusable, washable menstrual pad that has wings, it sort of button underneath your panties is going to leak proof layer. Otherwise, it's multiple layers of cotton that's made with organic certified cotton. So on the commercial side, we actually were selling the pads in India, but also all around the world. We're in 20 countries at the moment, mostly we work through retailers, and the commercial sales are the channel through which we can and especially our international sales, so every international customers or donor, when they purchase a paired they sponsor and they pay for an additional pair that's built into the cost, which we then can provide as part of their menstrual health education programs to adolescent girls, as we call that program ped for paired. So again, commercials, pretty straightforward marketing, sales, cloth pads, and we've got a whole range of different they're different sizes different we've got natural range of colored range, and it's a really beautiful chemical free high quality product there is lasts for maybe four or five years. Then on the non commercial side, which we've been talking largely about is where we focus our education work. And there I'd say the pad becomes more like there's this more like the Trojan horse that enables us to gives us sort of the financial means largely to do what we do on the nonprofit side. And then we have the two programs subhead for Penn focuses on adolescent girls, we largely work in government schools, because they're the most disadvantaged economically. And we work a lot with partners around the country. So we train partners to deliver the kind of education approach that I've spoken about. And then sort of just mentioned then the other program pence for sisters, that target group is women. So they actually contribute but a nominal amount for their peds. So if they want peds they will pay just a subsidized rate, which is affordable for them, because the commercial price is too high for them. But the emphasis for all their nonprofit work is more on the side of education. And another piece that we're really very kind of serious about is informed choice, like, we really don't ever want to push product on anybody. This is sort of one of my main critiques of a lot of you know, companies who just kind of push pads and or push their product and saying, Hey, this is the best you should use. And I truly believe that there is no such thing as a best menstrual product, I think it's highly contextual, it's got to be able to suit the, you know, the kind of terms of cultural acceptance, you know, availability and access to water. So we really tried to give women and girls so we do sessions with all the information and exposure to the different menstrual options that are out there so that they can make an informed choice. And I think that's super important. Because underpinning that value is the idea that we when given correct information, we can make wise choices for ourselves, we don't need to, you know, tell people what to do. So we spend, you know, usually a good hour in most of our sessions, really showing all the different options, talking about them, how they're used, what they cost, what the advantages and exploring these advantages and disadvantages. And you know, at the end of the day, we do see that many happy to use a cloth pad because they've understood and especially I think what really lands a deep impact is the recognition that say a disposable pen is the most common product used here in India and more so like tampons, and not at all common, even cloth is becoming more rare. So these disposable pads have really become the mainstream product. And they're full of plastics, and they're full of chemicals. And we know now that a single pad will probably take somewhere between 500 to 800 years to break down into micro plastics. So this sort of information obviously they're not being told them especially by advertisers.

Effy

We are led to believe that the disposable sanitary products are the epitome of hygiene, designed to make menstruation effortless. In reality, they're full of plastics and chemicals such as bleach and acetone. That's nail polish remover. So are tampons. The vulva is made up of mucous membrane, which means she absorbs everything directly into the bloodstream. We are absorbing all these chemicals every month.

Kathy

I think part of our main issue and concern is also an environment I mean we were talking about our embeddedness in nature obviously doing things that are trashing the earth are in complete contradiction of that that if they can then value and so and feeling I Think of connections. So we hope through our work that we convey some of those, once you feel that you belong to nature, it's not that you use a cloth pad because someone's, you know, hammered you into thinking that you have to do the right thing morally for the earth or whatever. But that, you know, it's like when you get that you are part of the earth you, the next logical step is you're not going to do something that's going to have it and so when you realize these pens sit around for so long, it's much more of a natural choice to choose something like this or a menstrual cup for more and more, you know, period panties are another sustainable option. So yeah, we're really seeing that throughout education work. And you know, also, in a way our activism around this topic that this topic of sustainable menstruation is really gaining a lot of traction in India.

Effy

Full disclosure, I do use eco foam pads now, they are the best I have found in the market. If you are looking to make a shift, I thoroughly recommend you check them out. We'll put the links in the show notes, and the new episode drop emails that you get in your inbox. By the way, if you're not getting those, you are missing out. So after you're done with this episode, why don't you jump onto our website, we are curious foxes.com and sign up. One more thing about disposable menstrual products with the type of advertising the manufacturers are putting out there. We are constantly getting the message that menstrual blood is dirty with the dumb blue liquid they used to illustrate the flow. And we are encouraged to be choppy and active during our periods despite what our bodies are saying. No, I don't want to wear skinny white pants and go for a run on my period. I want to be in comfy sweats and meditate. That's My nature. Kathy and I spoke for the best part of two hours, and it was one of the most unexpectedly transformative conversations I've ever had. When I arrived at our beautifully airy home surrounded by lush greenery in Oracle India, I was expecting to talk about how periods sucked, how we should all use your reusable path to save the planet. And what an incredibly inspiring social enterprise eco femme is creating this amazing circular model that provides income for rural women in India, while educating girls and women about menstruation by producing reusable sanitary pads that are environmentally responsible. What I found is an inner exploration and another path to healing the disassociation from my body and the earth through my menstrual cycle and the humble cloth pad. You can learn more about Cassie and eco femme and purchase the products by visiting eco femme.org eco femme is also an Instagram at Echo fan, and YouTube and Facebook as at Echo fam India. Once you can look at them, jump onto our website where you will find blog posts and past episodes that can help you indulge your curiosity around Love, Sex and Relationships. wearecuriousfoxes.com If you want to weigh in on this topic and connect with other foxy listeners, Head to facebook and join our Facebook group and we are curious foxes. If you find our episodes interesting and helpful, please share our podcasts with a friend. quickly read the show and leave a comment and subscribe on Apple podcast or connect with the show however it makes sense in your favorite podcast app. This will take a few seconds of your time, and it will have a big impact on us. To support the show, you can join us on Patreon ads. We are curious foxes, where you can find many episodes and podcasts extras and over 50 videos from educated led workshops. Go on to Patreon and we are curious foxes. And let us know that you're listening by sharing a comment or a story or a question by emailing us or sending us a voice memo to listening as we are curious foxes.com This episode is produced by Effy Blue, with help from Yağmur Erkişi, our editor is Nina Pollock, who helps us stay connected our voice every week. Our intro music is composed by dev Sahara. We are so grateful for that work, and we're grateful to you for listening. As always, stay curious friends. Curious Fox podcast is not and will never be the final word on any topic. We solely aim to encourage curiosity and provide a space for exploration through connection and story. We encourage you to listen with an open and curious mind and we'll look forward to your feedback. Stay curious friends.

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