A Kenyan senator, Gloria Orwoba is said to have been removed from parliament after attending a session in a white suit that had been stained red as part of a menstruation activism campaign.
On Wednesday, Gloria Orwoba of the ruling coalition is expected to table a move on a bill to distribute free sanitary pads as part of efforts to reduce period poverty.
According to reports, senators disrupted Tuesday’s afternoon session to draw the Speaker’s attention to Ms Orwoba’s “inappropriate dress code”. But the senator protested saying: “I am shocked that someone can stand here and say that the House has been disgraced because a woman has had her periods.”
Speaker Amason Kingi ordered the senator to go change her clothes before she could be readmitted to the chambers.
“Having periods is never a crime… Senator Gloria, I sympathise with you that you are going through the natural act of menstruation, you have stained your wonderful suit, I’m asking you to leave so that you go change and come back with clothes that are not stained,” the BBC quoted speaker in a report
Outside the chambers, Senator Gloria Orwoba confirmed the report to journalists saying “unfortunately I have been kicked out because I’m on my period and we are not supposed to show our period when we are on our period and that is the kind of period stigma girls and women are having outside…”