Dignity! Period - Campaign
The Scottish Women's Convention brought Lucia Matibenga to Scotland for International Women’s Day 2007. Lucia is a Zimbabwean, a mother of four, a trade unionist with the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, and a women's rights campaigner. She has campaigned and has been an activist for many years, facing imprisonment and torture because of her activism.

Lucia came to Scotland to promote the Dignity! Period. Campaign. This campaign is for the basic female human right to have access to sanitary protection. Due to the lack of affordable sanitary wear, women in Zimbabwe are resorting to using newspapers, cotton wool and cloth in order to protect themselves during their periods. This is leading to ongoing infections, for which there are no available medications. If women do get infections they are often accused of inappropriate sexual relations and this can be extremely difficult for the women. Women and girls are also prevented from going about their normal business due to lack of sanitary wear, missing days at school and at work, which they can ill-afford. This impacts on the poverty experienced by women and girls, who are facing food shortages, low wages and extremely high inflation, all of which contribute to very difficult conditions. Women and children are the ones who are most affected by poverty.

The life expectancy of women in Zimbabwe is 34, the lowest in the world. This high death rate is due to the conditions women have to face daily in their lives in Zimbabwe - poverty and the lack of health care and access to affordable medicines for infections caused, among other things, by the lack of hygienic sanitary wear.

"Ordinary women cannot afford sanitary wear. We are inserting old pieces of cloth or newspapers, but the ink from the newspaper is causing infections, and there is no medication to cure this. It's immoral for the leadership to deny us our biological rights." Thabitha Khumalo, another Zimbabwean activist, says.

In order to help on a one-to-one personal level, the SWC is asking Scottish women to send sanitary products on a monthly basis to individual women in Zimbabwe. Since the launch of the campaign on International Women’s Day 2007 women from around Scotland have been sending products to Zimbabwe. Out the 1000 names that were collected by the ZCTU the SWC has approximately 300 names left. The activists in Zimbabwe have monitored how this is going and have let us know that the products being sent regularly from Scotland is reaching women in Zimbabwe and is having a huge impact on women’s lives. We can send these cards out to women in Scotland who would like to take part.

If you are interested please contact the Scottish Women’s Convention on 0131 550 3754, or email info@scottishwomensconvention.org.