Building a business case for workplace menstrual hygiene management programs: a social cost–benefit analysis

Abstract

Inadequate menstrual health and hygiene (MHH) pose a great challenge for working women, affecting their productivity, job satisfaction, attendance, and advancement, and also have implications for their employers. Yet there has been little research to quantify the impacts of poor MHH conditions or to consider the value add of workplace MHH programs. As part of USAID's Water Sanitation and Hygiene Partnerships for Learning and Sustainability project, we conducted a social cost–benefit analysis (CBA) of the Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) in the Workplace Action Research, a 10-month intervention in private sector enterprises in Nepal and Kenya. The intervention aimed to determine if providing adequate MHM in the workplace contributes to women's economic empowerment, including improved business and social outcomes. This CBA of a workplace MHM intervention – the first of its kind – found a positive return for investing in workplace MHM programs. The average benefit–cost ratio in the base-case across factories in a 10-month intervention was 1.4, which increased to 2.3 when projected over 24 months. These early results of a pilot CBA on MHM in the workplace should serve as a call for greater attention by governments and businesses to the needs of menstruating women. HIGHLIGHTS USAID's Water Sanitation and Hygiene Partnerships for Learning and Sustainability project conducted a novel economic analysis of workplace menstrual hygiene management (MHM) programs to consider the social and economic costs and benefits of implementing these programs for employers and employees in four workplaces in Kenya and Nepal.; The economic analysis found that the benefits of the interventions outweighed the costs in three out of four workplaces over a 10-month intervention period.; Extended over a longer period of time (24-month intervention period), the analysis demonstrated a positive return on investment in all four workplaces with an average benefit–cost ratio of 2.3.; The benefits principally consisted of decreases in health-related expenditures (especially in Nepal) and reduced absenteeism (especially in Kenya where employees did not live on-site); the costs were comprised of those associated with implementing the program and those associated with improving toilet infrastructure.;

Keywords

• economic analysis
• gender equality
• menstrual health and hygiene
• workplace