CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 158Menstrual Health and DisordersGeography and Education MethodsGender, Education, and Development Issues

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 60 of the 62 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

It’s a girl thing: Menstruation, school attendance, spatial mobility and wider gender inequalities in Kenya

Open access
Jewitt, Sarah, Ryley, Harriet·2014·Geoforum
DOI 10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.07.006
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Recent attention has been drawn to possible linkages between poor sanitation in sub-Saharan African schools and low attendance rates amongst post-pubescent girls. In particular, questions have been raised about the influence of menstruation and access to sanitary products on schoolgirl absenteeism but research on this topic is scarce. Moreover, the few detailed empirical studies that have been conducted in sub-Saharan Africa on this topic have produced contradictory results. These uncertainties coupled with theories of how concepts of pollution and taboo are used to construct or police spatial boundaries (and maintain power relations within society) provide an interesting context for examining everyday geographies of menstruation. Kisumu, Kenya provides the context for the study which utilises a feminist political ecology framework to investigate cultural and spatial limitations associated with menstruation and puberty. Drawing on schoolgirls’ lived experiences, we illustrate how emotional geographies of puberty and menstruation are productive of and help to reproduce gender inequalities in mobility and access to social capital resources (especially education). At the same time we show how poverty coupled with low levels of sexual and reproductive health and rights education can exacerbate gendered bodily inequalities as girls face an increased risk of sexual exploitation when they reach puberty.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.07.006

Cites

60 of 60 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 62 references

Research works printed but not linked: 7

  1. Cooke, J., 2006. Practical Interventions to Meet the Menstrual Hygiene Needs of Schoolgirls: A Case Study from Katakwi, Uganda. Unpublished PhD thesis, Cranfield University.
  2. Cowen, D., Lehrer, U., Winkler, A., 2005. The secret lives of toilets: a public discourse on ‘private’ spaces in the city. In: McBride, J., Wilcox, A. (Eds.), uTOpia. Toronto: Coach House Books, pp. 194–203.
  3. Daley, 2000, Flushed with pride: Women’s quest for public toilets in New Zealand, Women’s Stud. J., 16, 95
  4. FAWE Uganda, 2003. Creating Opportunities for Girls’ Participation in Education in Uganda Presentation at Transforming Spaces: Girlhood, Action and Power Conference, Montreal, November 2003.
  5. Kirk, J., Sommer, M., 2005. Menstruation and Body Awareness: Critical Issues for Girls, Education Newsletter for Beyond Access: Gender, Education and Development, vol. 15, pp. 4–5.
  6. Malusu, 2014, An evaluation of the perception of secondary school students towards menstruation in Kenya, Afr. J. Educ. Technol., 4, 83
  7. Scott, L., Dopson, S., Montgomery, P., Dolan, C., Ryus, C., 2009. Impact of Providing Sanitary Pads to Poor Girls in Africa. Working Paper. SAID Business School, University of Oxford.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 101–158 of 158

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Jewitt, S., & Ryley, H.
Affiliations
University of Nottingham (GB)
Corresponding author
Jewitt, Sarah
ORCID
Jewitt, Sarah
Venue
Geoforum
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2014-09
Volume
56
Pages
137-147
ISSN
0016-7185 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.07.006
OpenAlex
W2142321107
Cited by
158
References
62
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 4
FWCI
7.59
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Geoforum (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Repository@Nottingham (University of Nottingham) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Nottingham ePrints (University of Nottingham) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
University of Nottingham
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Menstrual Health and Disorders
  • Social Sciences › Geography, Planning and Development › Geography and Education Methods
  • Social Sciences › Education › Gender, Education, and Development Issues
Keywords
menstruation, school attendance, school absenteeism, puberty, gender inequality, spatial mobility, everyday geographies, emotional geographies, sanitation, sanitary products, social capital, sexual and reproductive health education, sexual exploitation, poverty, feminist political ecology, Kisumu

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review