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Hello,

I can't find much, actually. A systematic review (https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/8/2772) found that the subject wasn't much studied, but in the four relevant studies (UK, South Africa, Tanzania), there is qualitative evidence that good sanitation helps with menstruation which in turns helps with attendance, but nothing quantitative.

This paper (https://www.wsp.org/Hygiene-Sanitation-Water-Toolkit/Resources/Readings/Bharadwai-2004-Menstrual.doc) however has interesting case studies from page 11, e.g. in Iran, lack of sanitary pads make girls miss 1 to 7 days / month of school (is your eyebrow raised as much as mine at this "7"?)

I guess you know this article written by WA staff (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13552071003600083) ? It has some data on school absenteeism from South Asia (section "impact on education")

This page quotes "10 to 20%" of school days missed (https://www.wsp.org/Hygiene-Sanitation-Water-Toolkit/BasicPrinciples/GenderRoles.html), however it is clearly an simple extrapolation from the 4 days every 4 weeks potentially missed because of menstruation - not a study.

There is evidence that good School WASH helps with attendance of girls (see e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22175695 in Kenya) and better WASH facilities helps with menstruation although that's far from the whole menstruation story. But if the link School WASH --> School attendance is good enough for you then there is data.

And then there's a range of publications that find no link (not very helpful for us unfortunately), e.g. https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/emily.oster/papers/menseduc.pdf in the US and https://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/669121?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104165202717 in Malawi.

Sorry, not terribly helpful... Rémi

Hello,

I can't find much, actually. A systematic review (https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/8/2772) found that the subject wasn't much studied, but in the four relevant studies (UK, South Africa, Tanzania), there is qualitative evidence that good sanitation helps with menstruation which in turns helps with attendance, but nothing quantitative.

This paper (https://www.wsp.org/Hygiene-Sanitation-Water-Toolkit/Resources/Readings/Bharadwai-2004-Menstrual.doc) however has interesting case studies from page 11, e.g. in Iran, lack of sanitary pads make girls miss 1 to 7 days / month of school (is your eyebrow raised as much as mine at this "7"?)

I guess you know this article written by WA staff (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13552071003600083) ? It has some data on school absenteeism from South Asia (section "impact on education")

This page quotes "10 to 20%" of school days missed (https://www.wsp.org/Hygiene-Sanitation-Water-Toolkit/BasicPrinciples/GenderRoles.html), however it is clearly an simple extrapolation from the 4 days every 4 weeks potentially missed because of menstruation - not a study.

There is evidence that good School WASH helps with attendance of girls (see e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22175695 in Kenya) and better WASH facilities helps with menstruation although that's far from the whole menstruation story. But if the link School WASH --> School attendance is good enough for you then there is data.

And then there's a range of publications that find no link (not very helpful for us unfortunately), link, e.g. https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/emily.oster/papers/menseduc.pdf in the US and https://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/669121?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104165202717 in Malawi.

Sorry, not terribly helpful... Rémi