Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Framing: Unpacking the Silence on Menstrual Health in the Global Feminist Agenda

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

The absence of menstrual health issues from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo and the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing presents a significant puzzle, especially given the pivotal role of feminists in shaping these landmark agendas. Despite millions of women and girls globally facing profound challenges in managing menstruation, activists for reproductive rights remained conspicuously silent on this issue. This paper investigates this oversight by drawing on interdisciplinary literature concerning social movements, global health, and agenda-setting.

Examining mobilizing structures, resonant framing, the political environment, and issue characteristics, this study finds that the inherent attributes of menstruation as an issue best explain its exclusion from the ICPD and Beijing Platforms for Action. Utilizing an intersectional approach to policymaking, the research demonstrates that despite a favorable political context, robust mobilizing structures, and frames capable of public resonance, even feminists overlooked the issue. This was primarily because its burdens disproportionately affect intersectionally marginalized populations.

Using qualitative document analysis of conference materials, organizational archives, policy statements, major reports, and advocacy texts, alongside a collective biographical analysis of twenty-four key transnational activists, I show the limits of current explanations. I argue that intra-group inequalities within advocacy networks may help determine which problems become recognized as global priorities and which remain neglected. By examining a case in which a significant issue failed to gain global agenda status, this study makes a new contribution to scholarship on feminist advocacy, global health, and agenda formation.

Author

• Rita Jalali, American University