An interview conducted by Empower Period Committee member Ishika Seal.
Ananya Chhaochharia is the founder of Paint It Red, an organization advocating for menstrual rights and addressing period poverty. We recently spoke with her about her journey from political consulting to menstrual rights advocacy, her perspectives on policy change, and her experiences building a global movement.
Could you share what catalyzed your transition from political consulting to founding Paint It Red?
It was during a political campaign; I was in rural Bihar. I started my periods - I was suffering from PCOD at that point of time, so it was an unexpected visit. And it was just startling, because there were no shops that were selling sanitary napkins for about 250 kilometers.
That combined with seeing how agricultural irrigation canals were filled with trash - and the trash that stood out to me a lot was sanitary waste. I had already been a menstrual cup user for a while, and it got me thinking about why we're not using or upgrading sustainable products that can be adopted at the grassroot level.
I reached out to some nonprofit organizations I had worked with in the past to test the waters, trying to figure out if I could have conversations with communities about challenges, hurdles, information and education levels, and awareness about available products. I started with home ground - Kolkata, because those were the communities I knew best.
How has your approach evolved since starting?
I started with a focus on menstrual products, sustainable menstrual products, but it steadily became more about education because I realized that the information gap is a greater challenge than access to products. Even if someone's using a disposable napkin but is only changing it once or twice a day, the harms of that is definitely greater than what kind of product they're using.
We started focusing more on adolescents, because by the time you're 25-30, you've already done half your life as a menstruator. Your affinity to adopting or adapting to changes becomes less. When you're young, it's a scary thing, why not prepare them from an early age? Why not make this a part of a comprehensive body literacy efforts?
If you start young, the chance of changing generational misinformation is so much higher. Our focus has, over time, become narrower, but it did initially start with that access to product.
Among your campaigns like 'Bleed in Peace' and 'Say it with a Pin', which one is closest to your heart?
“Bleed in Peace” will always be very close to my heart, because it was our first flagship campaign. And it was so necessary at the point that it happened. This was right when COVID hit India, and we went into our first lockdown. The government forgot to add sanitary napkins as an essential product in the first list of essential goods that had come out.
We reached out to about 160 self-help groups across the country, taking all their existing stocks. I had to fight multiple times in several police stations to get permission for vehicle movement, so I started carrying cloth pads in my bag to show them why I was here. I remember waving it around in Shakespeare's Sarani police station and being like, "just because the government thinks we don't need this, periods are not going to actually stop for the pandemic." We managed to get 81,000 cloth pads out in less than one and a half months. That will always remain very close to my heart.
In recent times, one of the most interesting things we've been working on is an activity workbook, “Period Pustak” for adolescents starting age eight. It's a very interactive book where they get to actually play commonplace games like Ludo and snakes and ladder to learn more about their body, and good and bad practices. We're working on our third edition now, with translations happening simultaneously in about 28 languages in India.
What's your perspective on menstrual leave policies?
My controversial opinion is that menstrual leave is not the groundbreaking policy that we've been waiting for. It is a means to the end. We as gender minorities, who are finally creating a niche for ourselves in places that were not meant for us in the corporate world especially, don't need another setback. You don't need another thing which is viewed as a "differentiating benefit."
What you need is a greater understanding of gender sensitivity altogether, understanding of what equity in workplace actually looks like. Period leave is going to just be a part of it. This whole conversation on menstrual leave takes away from the larger framework of policy advocacy that a lot of us have been working on. Period leave is not an inclusive policy - it does not include rural menstruators. It's for a very select few people that you're advocating for. All that to say that I always support my contemporaries who are fighting this fight for the advancement of menstruators.
Can you tell us about your experience creating grassroots impact, like your work in Himachal Pradesh?
I was visiting Dharamshala, staying in a homestay with a lovely couple. When I was talking to auntie about the work I do, she shared her experience using old scraps of cloth and the one rupee pads distributed in Anganwadi. I asked if I could have conversations with others in the community - she got 20 women together the very next day.
What started with one conversation spread. They were not just enthusiastic, they started getting more young women and their children involved. I ended up doing sessions every day. The member of parliament from the adjoining district reached out about training a self-help group to make cloth pads. My six-day trip became a six-month stay, building a proper team and structure there.
We heard Paint it Red was featured on Times Square! How did that happen?
I'm always looking for creative ways to fundraise - it's the most exhausting part of our job, especially when you're a young organization and don't have CSR licensing or FCRA. I met this young founder of a boutique perfumery based out of New York. He and his partner were creating unique smells, and he reached out about doing social campaigns after a successful fundraiser for Gaza.
It took multiple conversations to explain my story and Paint It Red's journey, our values, where we come from. They created this beautiful unisex smell - I can take no credit for it, it was all them. That's how I got platformed, and then it got picked up and put on Times Square. I still don't know how the publishing people found us, but they liked what we did, liked our perfume, and decided to put my very awkward face up there. I was just so shocked when I woke up to that news - they just said, "Oh yeah, by the way, tonight, 9pm, it will be on the Times Square billboard."
What are the key policy changes needed in this space?
There are three big buckets. One is on the product side - creating standards and industry practices so we have quality products available. That's not just a problem in India, but across the globe. From scented pads which are carcinogenic to menstrual cups using food grade instead of medical grade silicone - unless you're in this space doing research, you wouldn't know this. The responsibility lies on manufacturers and government regulation.
Second is education - making it compulsory in the education system and ensuring teachers have resources and training. We need a lifecycle approach, starting young and keeping evolutionary theory at the center to create modules that are interactive, engaging, and inclusive. We work with children with autism, down syndrome, physical disabilities, trans kids - their needs are different because we are human beings, we're all different.
Third is creating systems and institutions at the community level. In India we've used Anganwadis and ASHA workers, but they're overburdened and underfunded. We need to create healthcare systems and last-mile delivery without overburdening existing structures.
How do you approach the infrastructure gap, like the lack of adequate toilet facilities in schools?
I feel when we talk about period poverty, sometimes we get a little caught up in the tangibles of it, the products, the infrastructure. But I genuinely feel like the underlying issues that we need to address is the shame and stigma first. That is the basis on which the superstructure of the period poverty ecosystem lies on.
Yes, you need to have washrooms, I'm not saying not having washrooms is okay. But if the shame and stigma is so high that you refuse to even leave your house, or you're not allowed to leave your house, and you have to isolate yourself, or you're not willing to have conversations about it, the larger change will not happen.
We also need to create more access for having women in power, in decision-making roles. In every space , be it a nonprofit like ours all the way to parliaments, we need to see more uterus owners who are part of the decision-making table.
What do you see as the main challenges in advocating for these changes?
The social stigma stems very deeply from religion and culture - though technically religion has never put a barrier on us, it's the way we've interpreted religion. If anybody can show me any ancient religious text that shows explicit language prohibiting menstruators from practicing their religion or leading their life with normalcy, I will stop doing what I do. So far, I remain pretty uncontested.
Most people don't understand that the very existence of humankind is dependent on whether we have healthy uterines or not. We can talk all we want about maternal health, but no one's getting pregnant if you're not having periods properly. It is our alarm clock - anything wrong in our body is actually mapped down to our periods.
There's also a basic lack of knowledge. When I do workshops, people are surprised to learn that when a baby comes out, the blood you see is your uterine lining - the same period blood that you would have shed every month. And this isn't just in rural areas - try having this conversation with an educated urban elite person, and you'll get the same response.
What message would you share with other advocates and feminists globally?
I would tell everybody to think about what language they're using to talk about menstruating people and how they can show up in their everyday life for the people around them. Change starts with us - it really does. One tiny action can sometimes just be all you need. This is not a women's issue, it's a larger societal issue, and we learn and unlearn through it.
I see cross-collaboration happening in being able to recognize menstrual rights as basic human rights - that's what I hope to see before I die. If there is a recognition that getting access to basic menstrual care is not a luxury but a necessity, and in fact a right that all of us have and deserve, we will be at a better place.
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