The impact of menstruation hygiene management on work absenteeism of women in Burkina Faso

Women in developing countries face challenges in terms of managing their menstrual hygiene. They often do not possess the appropriate means, materials, or have access to suitable facilities. Using a newly released dataset for Burkina Faso and propensity score matching, we provide for the first time evidence of the impact of advanced menstrual hygiene management on work attendance. We show that the use of disposable sanitary pads rather than old cloth reduces work absenteeism of women by approximately 24% points. We report the robustness of the results with respect to alternative specifications of the propensity score model and investigate the results for samples stratified by education, wealth, marital status, and religion.