Apps Against Shame

What was once whispered in secret can now be managed digitally, giving women knowledge, confidence, and control.

- Arbeena

Each morning, before the city stirs fully, Yumna, a twenty-three-year-old student in Srinagar, reaches for her phone. She bypasses WhatsApp, Instagram, the endless chatter of social media, and opens an app tucked in a folder named simply “tools.”

To anyone else, it is unremarkable. To Yumna, it is a map of her body, a small rebellion against a silence that has been layered over her life for as long as she can remember.

There, she marks the restless nights, the subtle aches, and the days when her body signals its rhythm in whispers.

Menstruation is rarely discussed in Kashmir. Mothers lean close and whisper advice. Sisters exchange silent warnings. Schools pass over the subject as if it were invisible. Conversations in families are brief, hushed, and polite in their avoidance.

In this cultural fix, the simple act of opening an app, noting a symptom, and predicting the ebb and flow of her own cycle, feels revolutionary.

Yumna is not alone. Across the valley, women are finding ways to track their health, to understand patterns that once eluded them.

A recent study in Women's Reproductive Health noted that Kashmiri women use these apps to chart cycles, anticipate premenstrual moods, or plan daily life around periods.