Our Story
We exist to challenge the lack of long-term strategies which support innovative reproductive health solutions
We are a young, non-governmental organisation consisting of Public Health, Anthropology, Development and Sociology professionals who are passionate about addressing social issues in Africa related to gender, reproductive health and menstrual hygiene management.

Our story began in Uganda, where two of our co-founders Maria and Marianne were doing research on family planning methods in 2010. During the course of their research, they discovered that many women did not have effective methods for managing their menstruation. When exploring the issue further, they found that there was a greater paucity of evidence on menstrual hygiene management. Around the same time, they were introduced to the menstrual cup and the idea of exploring the cup as a possible solution was born.

A couple of years later, when one of the WoMena co-founders was approached by girls in northern Uganda asking for pads, the decision to test our hypothesis and found WoMena was made.

Our approach
WoMena’s work is committed to making reproductive health innovations widely accessible. This refers both to ‘hardware’ (e.g. products) and ‘software’ (e.g. new knowledge, action). At this stage, we have particularly worked with menstrual health innovations.
Innovation often includes both hardware (e.g. products such as menstrual cups) but also software (reduction in feelings of shame, improved knowledge*). This is especially so in a field such as reproductive health, which is sensitive. Within that, menstruation is surrounded by many taboos. A product such as a menstrual cup may be particularly challenging, since it involves touching yourself. That is, we need to go beyond simple distribution of hardware, which is why one of our most cherished tools is training.

There is increasing agreement that this is so. A decade ago, adequate ‘menstrual hygiene’ was seen only in terms of providing menstrual products and WASH. More recently,there is acknowledgement that we need to see the topic more broadly (not only ‘hygiene’ but ‘health) and that adequate menstrual health management includes not only hardware (products, water, sanitation) but also hygiene education of the individual menstruator, but her surroundings, and beyond that, positive social norms and policy.