By Angwi Njamah

Amina (name Changed), “I first heard about being cut through by older women in my community. The adults described it as a necessary step towards becoming a respectable woman. Other girls my age also talked about it, although most of them only repeated what we had heard from our mothers and grandmothers. I knew very little before my first menstruation. Most of what I heard came from older girls whispering among themselves. Those conversations often created more fear, so I could not and did not ask questions”

 

For so long, two of the world’s most common forms of discrimination against women and girls have been treated as entirely separate stories. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is documented, argued about, and laws are being passed against it as a violation carried out on the body. Menstrual discrimination is treated as a matter of health, hygiene, and access to menstrual products. But Amina’s story already begins to blur that line. Drawing from the Dignified Menstruation (DM) framework developed by the Global South Coalition for Dignified Menstruation (GSCDM), this article expatiates on the fact that the separation is a cover-up of the real issue: Patriarchal Systems. These issues are more or less “siblings,” in a family where FGM is the older sibling, both aimed at the lifelong goal of controlling the menstruating body.

Amina. “The decision was made by the older members of my family. My parents followed what they believed was expected by the community. There was also pressure from relatives who felt that an uncut girl would bring shame to the family. Menstruation has often been uncomfortable and sometimes more painful than I expected. There were occasions when I worried because I did not know whether what I was experiencing was normal or if it was because I was cut.”

 

Leila. “My mother was so excited when I told her about my first menses, she said I should start getting ready for suitors”

Their experiences trace a pattern that becomes clearer once we follow it across a girl’s life. Which now leads to talking about;

The Four Stages of the Same System

“Before a menstruator learns what menstruation is,” the DM framework states, “they have already learned that their bodies belong to others.”

In communities where girls face FGM, the discrimination does not end with the cut; Before menarche (first menses), someone builds a gate across her path that is FGM, her body already being controlled.

When menstruation begins, instead of clear signposts, she finds silence, whispers about what to do and what not to do, and fear replaces truth.

As a teenager: restrictions grow, school is missed, and she even pulls away from friends.

And as a woman, those limits become invisible ropes, tugging at her choices and holding her back, quieter barriers to freedom, choice, and leadership. It’s like planting a tree and then tying it down at every stage it can never grow tall and strong.

 

What This Looks Like in Different Places

This same pattern shows up far beyond Amina and Leila’s community. Around the world, wherever cutting happens, menstruation is also treated as something shameful. In Sierra Leone, most girls join a group called the Bondo society. Long ago, girls were cut and joined Bondo at the same age they got their first menses (Menarche). So, getting cut and starting her period became one single event marking the menstruator as ready to be watched and controlled by the community. In parts of Kenya, women who had been cut said they often could not tell whether period pain was just normal, or whether it was caused by the cutting. This is similar to “Aminas” worry in Cameroon. In Egypt, many girls are still cut today. Families often say cutting keeps a girl “clean” and “pure.” Those same two words used to shame menstruators. Away from the African continent, in Indonesia, about half of all girls are cut. Many families say it is tradition, or that it makes a girl a good Muslim. Like menstrual shame, it is passed down quietly from grandmother, to mother, then to daughter.

Different places. Different words. But the same belief hides underneath;

A body that has not been cut, or a body that is bleeding, is dirty and must be fixed or hidden.

Like from Leila’s experience both cutting and menarche are signs that a girl is now ready to become a wife not as something personal.

Cutting is meant to lower a girl’s feelings; keeping menstruation secret stops menstruators from learning about their own body thus taking away the power to choose.

Girls are raised to serve their families and communities first. So, both the cutting and menstrual discrimination stop being her private business, and become everyone else’s instead.

This is why simply stopping the cutting is not enough.

Menstrual Dignity; The Overlooked Element

Most work against FGM so far has done three things: shown the health damage it causes, spread awareness, and pushed for laws to ban it. All of this has saved lives. But none of it fully questions the deeper belief that a girl’s body belongs to someone else, the same belief that makes cutting seem acceptable in the first place. This is the missing piece that Dignified Menstruation offers. The idea comes from the Global South Coalition for Dignified Menstruation, and it says every person who menstruates deserves dignity, everywhere, not just during menstruation. It rests on four simple ideas:

A girl deserves respect from the day she is born, through menarche, adulthood, and into old age not only during the days she bleeds.

Menstruating is normal and human. No one should be shamed, restricted, or punished for it, the same way no one should be cut without their choice.

Fixing menstrual discrimination means looking at health, money, school, and family life together, not just handing out pads.

Respect local ways, but do not harm: local traditions and elders carry real wisdom, but any tradition that hurts girls, needs to change.

In essence, ending the cutting without ending the shame is only half the job. Anti-FGM campaigns and menstrual health and dignity programs have developed largely in isolation from one another, despite operating in many of the same communities and targeting many of the same girls. UNICEF’s 2024 global report estimated that more than 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, a 15% increase since 2016, and warned that the current rate of decline is far too slow to meet the United Nations’ target of eliminating the practice by 2030. Yet in countries like Cameroon, those numbers say nothing about the scale of menstrual discrimination affecting virtually every girl in these countries, cut or not.

 

So then If menstruation is treated in a community as something that must be hidden, controlled, or purified, is FGM simply the earliest, most physical expression of that same belief? Can FGM realistically be eliminated while the communities that practice it continue to teach girls that menstruation itself is shameful? And have global efforts, by concentrating almost exclusively on ending the act of cutting, left untouched the belief system underneath it that a woman has no right over her body, that certain parts of it are taboo, the very belief that makes cutting acceptable in the first place?

This isn’t a side issue. It is about basic human rights. The UN’s women’s rights committee (CEDAW) clearly noted that, when girls are shamed, isolated, or restricted just because they are menstruating, it is not some small cultural habit, it is part of the same system that keeps women and girls seen as “less than.” Another UN report went even further, calling menstrual discrimination a hidden gap the world has quietly ignored for years. Together, these two issues form a pattern woven deep into the fabric of society. FGM and menstrual discrimination take away the same things: a person’s dignity, their right to make choices about their own body, their equal chance at education, healthcare, and simply being treated like they matter.

Beyond the Cutting.

Picture a girl’s journey through life as a river flowing through time. At the start, FGM is like a dam built across her path, blocking her before she even knows the waters of menstruation. But removing that dam alone isn’t enough. As the river flows, new obstacles appear:Menstrual discrimination, silence that clouds the water, shame stains it, and exclusion diverts it away from the community. Month after month, year after year, the wound shifts, reopens, and keeps reshaping her journey. Unless we clear the whole river, the dam, and the hidden barriers downstream, the river will not flow freely. Girls will keep facing discrimination, shame, no autonomy, and barriers over their bodies long after the cut has healed.

What Needs to Change;

Educate about menstruation inside the same programs that work to end cutting, instead of running them as two separate projects.

Let women who have lived through cutting and menstrual discrimination help design the solutions, not just tell their stories.

Bring families, schools, religious leaders, and government together, instead of expecting outsiders to fix it alone.

Judge success by how much freedom and choice girls gain not only by counting how many cuttings.

Are we now Ready and Willing to clear the entire River together from the source?

This article is supported by the Global South Coalition for Dignified Menstruation (GSCDM).