“Menstrupedia: Aditi Gupta’s Step Towards Breaking the Menstruation Taboo”

Abstract

Women today, are at the forefront of many fields. They are paving new pathways for younger generations and also proving to be fabulous role models. According to the Sixth Economic Census, released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, women constitute around 14% of the total entrepreneurship. But there have been traditional cultural constructions of female body and the meaning of menstruation within Indian symbolic systems and these meanings have undoubtedly shaped Indian women’s experiences of female bodily processes and also the perception of both men and women regarding the female bodily processes. Anyways every woman as she starts menstruating is suddenly introduced to certain rules like not visiting a temple, not touching pickle, not performing Pooja or rituals, etc. This is questioned by women at first but then it becomes the part of the consciousness and women have to accept it as part of her life and she suddenly becomes impure for a certain time-period every month.  These things are followed in belief as well as practise. There needs to be a way charted out to make them understand that there are scientific reasons for them to rest during the period and then leave them with the personal choice of following what or what not. Women as social entrepreneur have been working towards bringing social changes. One such inspiring women entrepreneur is Aditi Gupta, who has started a business that has revolutionised the lives of countless young women. The primary purpose of the paper is to study the journey of a young women trying to revolutionize the mind-set of people by touching upon the issue of mensturation, which is considered a taboo in India and the challenges faced by her.