Dignity, Equality, and Menstrual Health: A Constitutional Moment for India

Suhana Roy

In January 2026, India’s Supreme Court delivered a transformative judgment recognizing access to menstrual health and hygiene as an integral component of the right to life, dignity, and bodily autonomy under article 21 of the Constitution in the case of Dr Jaya Thakur v Government of India & Ors. In doing so, the court moved menstrual health from the realm of welfare schemes and policy initiatives into the domain of enforceable constitutional rights—an important development in the evolving jurisprudence of gender equality and health justice.

The ruling touched on the institutional obstacles that menstruating girls and especially those in government schools and in rural areas still encounter. The court has recognized that the lack of gender-segregated toilets, access to safe water, menstrual supplies, and hygienic waste disposal systems compel many girls to miss school during their menstrual cycle, which in essence restricts access to education and promotes gender-based inequality. Recognizing all these deprivations as an abuse of dignity and autonomy, the court established menstrual health as a subject of constitutional law of substantive equality.

Constitutionalizing menstrual health

The ruling represents a change of doctrine. Although previous public health initiatives regarding menstrual hygiene were categorized as developmental or policy agendas, the court made it clear that menstrual health infrastructure availability is a constitutional duty under article 21 which in combination with article 14 and article 15 ensures the equality and any form of discrimination against sex is forbidden.

Notably, the court found menstrual poverty to be a structural rights problem, not a personal plight. This framing aligns menstrual health with the broader jurisprudence of dignity developed in cases such as Suchita Srivastava v. Chandigarh Administration and K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, where autonomy over bodily functions and personal decision-making was recognized as a central component of constitutional liberty.

The court’s directions to states and union territories were both specific and enforceable. Governments were advised to ensure all schools have functional and gender segregated toilets, safe disposal systems, and menstrual hygiene products. Government schools will be accountable to their state over compliance and non-compliant private schools may face deregistration.

Linking menstrual health to the right to education and equality

The court acknowledged that when menstruating students miss school due to a lack of menstrual facilities, the resulting learning gaps accumulate over time, contribute to patterns of dropout and ultimately limit economic opportunities. Menstrual inequality becomes a structural barrier to the constitutional promise of equal citizenship.

By linking the right to education with dignity to menstrual health, the court implicitly advocated a substantive equality theory, which acknowledges that the same treatment cannot result in equality when biological conditions and social conditions are different.

This argument is aligned with a rights-based approach to menstrual health. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the UN Special Rapporteur‘s documents on water, sanitation, and health highlight that menstrual hygiene is essential to gender equality, education, and a right to health.

The implementation challenge

The impact of the judgment ultimately depends on the implementation of the infrastructural and socio-cultural recommendations. According to the National Family Health Survey, even though the number of women who use hygienic menstrual methods has been increasing in recent years, many girls, especially in rural and financially disadvantaged areas, have limited and unreliable access to menstrual products and sanitation facilities.

The existing stigma and cultural taboos of menstruation compound the gaps in infrastructure and slows down policy action. The lack of disposal systems for sanitary items creates environmental issues and is an additional deterrence to their use. In the absence of long-term financial commitments and awareness campaigns at a community level, there is a risk that constitutional recognition of the right to menstrual health hygiene will not be fulfilled.

Indian constitutional jurisprudence has repeatedly warned against the emergence of “paper rights”, rights recognized in principle but inadequately realized in practice. The present judgment therefore places a significant responsibility on governments at both union and state levels to treat menstrual health infrastructure as essential public health investment rather than an auxiliary welfare expenditure.

A broader shift in health rights jurisprudence

The menstrual health ruling represents part of a broader judicial trend toward expanding the meaning of article 21 to encompass diverse dimensions of health, dignity, and social participation. Recent decisions recognizing mental health, disability access, reproductive autonomy, and environmental health as constitutional entitlements reflect an evolving understanding of the right to life as a guarantee of conditions necessary for meaningful human flourishing.

In this trajectory, the court’s recognition of menstrual health is significant because it addresses a historically invisible dimension of gender inequality, one rooted not in formal legal discrimination but in the everyday design of institutions and infrastructure. By identifying the absence of menstrual facilities as a constitutional violation, the judgment reframes menstruation from a private biological matter into a public rights issue requiring a systemic institutional response.

Suhana Roy is a BA LLB (Hons) student at Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur, India.