Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Women's Studies International Forum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif A contemporary phenomenology of menstruation: Understanding the body in situation and as situation in public health interventions to address menstruation-related challenges Lindsay Kelland a,⁎ , Sharli Paphitis b , Catriona Macleod c a Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics, Philosophy Department, Rhodes University, PO Box 94, Grahamstown 6140, South Africa b Community Engagement Division, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa c Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction, Psychology Department, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Menstruation embodiment feminist theory freedom public health ABSTRACT Social science and public health research has pointed to, firstly, the challenges women face in terms of the management of menstruation and, secondly, to the negative symbolic associations made with the menstruating body. This research, however, seldom engages with philosophical issues relating to embodied subjectivity in order to explain and understand the trends noted. In this paper, we attempt to bridge the divide between feminist theory and current research on the menstruation-related challenges facing women today. We provide a feminist phenomenological account of menstruation in which women's shared bodily lived experiences of menstru- ation—the body as situation—are set within contexts that enable and/or restrain freedom—the body in situation. This account allows us to understand the universal and differentiated aspects of menstruation and menstrual management, thereby providing a nuanced picture of the interplay between the physical occurrence of men- struation, the symbolic associations made with menstruation, and the socio-material, historical and political conditions within which women live. Such an account, we suggest, should inform advocacy around public policy and institutional civic society that promotes the freedom of women to engage in important life projects, and ground public health interventions around menstruation related challenges. “If feminism is to have a future, feminist theory—feminist thought, feminist writing—must be able to show that feminism has wise and useful things to say to women who struggle to cope with everyday problems… Beauvoir's insights remain fundamental to contemporary feminism. But she analyzed the world she lived in. We need to analyze our own world.”— Toril Moi 1 A woman typically menstruates for a significant portion of her lifetime. As such, menstruation could be seen as a universal physiolo- gical phenomenon that women must manage, no matter their geo- graphical, material or socio-political location. 2 At the same time, however, differences in contemporary social, cultural and symbolic responses to menstruation, in access to menstrual products, and in the provision of public facilities, greatly affect women's management of menstruation, as well as their ability to engage comfortably in various activities in both the private and public domains. In this paper, we attempt to bridge the divide between feminist theory and current research from social science and public health on the menstruation-related challenges facing women in contemporary so- ciety. Bringing feminist theory together with current research in these fields provides us not only with a deeper understanding of the ‘pro- blem’ 3 of menstruation itself, but, further, with a more holistic view of the various material and symbolic factors associated with this ‘pro- blem’, as well as an understanding of how the causes of this ‘problem’ give rise to various menstruation related challenges which interact with and affect one another. Furthermore, supplementing this current re- search with feminist phenomenological theory enables us to produce a grounded theoretical account of the issues that highlights both the universal and the differentiated aspects of menstruation. This, in turn, enables us to suggest certain crucial components which should, we argue, form the foundation of public health intervention strategies that http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2017.09.004 Received 31 March 2015; Received in revised form 6 September 2017; Accepted 6 September 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: l.kelland@ru.ac.za (L. Kelland). 1 Moi, T. (2006) ‘”I am not a feminist, but…”: How Feminism became the F-word’ in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 121(5):1735–1741. 2 This being said, we acknowledge that not all women menstruate—transwomen, for instance, do not menstruate. 3 To speak of menstruation as a problem that needs to be managed could itself have implications for the ways in which we think of menstruation symbolically. The very idea that menstruation is a problem could, of course, be seen to reinforce patriarchy through the othering, deviance and inferiorisation of the female body. Thanks to a reviewer for Women's Studies International Forum for emphasising this point. Women's Studies International Forum 63 (2017) 33–41 Available online 14 September 2017 0277-5395/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK