| Abstract | This study examines how menstrual inequity is produced and managed among street based homeless women in Bangkok, Thailand where menstruation is negotiated entirely within public space. Despite women comprising a minority of the street-based population, their menstrual needs remain largely unrecognized within a policy landscape that treats homelessness as gender-neutral. This research identifies a structural blind spot, showing how menstruation becomes increasingly burdensome under conditions of housing precarity and limited institutional support.Utilizing a qualitative research design, the study synthesizes Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1989) concept of intersectionality with the Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, and Quality (AAAQ) Framework. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with street-based women and institutional key informants from government and non governmental sectors. The study employs the AAAQ framework as a tool to identify practical service failures, while intersectionality explains how these failures are rooted in the combination of gender, class, and housing status.Findings show that menstrual inequity in urban Bangkok is shaped by interconnected failures across all four AAAQ dimensions. Limited sanitation access and the absence of menstrual products constrain availability, while financial costs and unsafe environments restrict accessibility. Acceptability is affected by stigma and distrust of institutional care, and quality is undermined by inadequate medical support and institutional practices that fail to meet women’s needs. In response, women adopt adaptive strategies that prioritize immediate survival, but which compromise their health and dignity.The analysis further identifies structural drivers within legal frameworks, welfare design, and urban governance that overlook gender-specific needs. Institutional logic misreads women’s silence as self-sufficiency, effectively shifting the responsibility for care onto an overwhelmed and fragmented NGO sector.The study concludes that menstrual inequity is a systemically produced outcome where AAAQ failures including temporal facility closures (Availability), financial exclusion (Accessibility), institutional stigma (Acceptability), and inadequate support (Quality) are fundamentally rooted in an intersectional blind spot. This research demonstrates that the convergence of gender, class, and housing status renders the menstrual needs of street-based women administratively invisible within Thai legal frameworks such as the Homeless Protection and Cosmetic Acts. By synthesizing the AAAQ framework with intersectionality, this study makes a conceptual contribution by shifting the understanding of menstrual inequity from a matter of individual hygiene to a result of structural exclusion. It highlights a need for policy shift that recognizes menstrual care not as a consumer choice, but as a fundamental component of urban welfare and sanitation infrastructure. |
