Who Invented Sanitary Pads? The Padman Story & India's Low-Cost Pad Machine

The history of sanitary pads is longer and more surprising than most people expect. From improvised cloth rags to mass-produced disposable pads, and from a multinational patent to a village inventor who changed menstrual hygiene in rural India, the story of who invented the sanitary pad is really several stories at once. This article covers all of them.

The Early History of Menstrual Protection

For most of human history, people who menstruated used whatever was available: folded cloth, rags, moss, or simply nothing at all. Disposable menstrual products didn't exist until the late 19th century, and even then, they were expensive, hard to find, and socially taboo to discuss openly.

The first commercially produced disposable menstrual pad is generally credited to Johnson & Johnson, which launched a product called Lister's Towels in 1896. It was made from a wood-pulp material developed by nurses during the American Civil War, who had noticed that the cellulose bandaging material absorbed blood far better than cotton. The product was ahead of its time but failed commercially, largely because the social stigma around menstruation made it impossible to advertise or discuss openly in stores.

Kotex, launched in 1920 by Kimberly-Clark, was the product that finally made disposable sanitary pads mainstream. It used a similar cellulose material and was marketed with enough discretion to get past the social barriers of the era. By the mid-20th century, disposable pads had become the norm in much of the Western world, though access remained deeply unequal globally.

Arunachalam Muruganantham: India's Padman

The most remarkable chapter in the history of sanitary pads in India belongs not to a corporation, but to a school dropout from Coimbatore named Arunachalam Muruganantham.

In 1998, Muruganantham discovered that his wife was using dirty rags during her period because commercial pads were too expensive. Disturbed by this, he set out to understand why pads cost so much and whether he could make them more affordable. What followed was more than a decade of obsessive, often ridiculed experimentation.

He tested pads on himself using a bladder filled with animal blood. He was ostracised by his village, separated from his wife, and at one point was thought to be mentally ill. He refused funding from corporations that wanted to commercialise his work and instead chose a path that would keep the technology accessible to the people who needed it most.

By 2009, Muruganantham had developed a simple, low-cost machine that could produce sanitary pads from pine bark fibre at a fraction of the cost of commercial alternatives. Crucially, the machine was small enough to be operated by a single person or a small self-help group, and cheap enough to be deployed in rural villages.

The Low-Cost Pad Machine: How It Works

Muruganantham's machine works by processing cellulose fibre, originally derived from pine bark, into the absorbent core of a pad. The process involves:

• Crushing and defibrating the raw cellulose material into a fluffy, absorbent layer
• Wrapping it in a non-woven fabric layer to form the pad shape
• Sealing and cutting the pads to size
• UV sterilising the finished pads before packaging

The entire machine fits in a small room, costs a fraction of industrial pad-manufacturing equipment, and can be operated without technical expertise. This made it possible for women's self-help groups in rural India to manufacture and sell affordable sanitary pads within their own communities, creating both a product and a livelihood at the same time.

Impact and Recognition

Muruganantham's invention has been deployed across more than 1,300 villages in 23 Indian states, as well as in several other countries. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2016, one of India's highest civilian honours, and his story was adapted into the 2018 Bollywood film Pad Man, starring Akshay Kumar, which brought his work to a mainstream audience and sparked a wider national conversation about menstrual hygiene.

Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014. He has consistently refused to patent his machine or sell it to corporations, choosing instead to keep it in the public domain so it can be replicated freely by anyone who needs it.

Why This History Matters Today

Access to affordable, hygienic sanitary pads remains unequal in India. According to various public health surveys, a significant proportion of women and girls in rural areas still use cloth or other improvised materials during menstruation, often due to cost, availability, or social stigma. Muruganantham's machine was a direct response to this gap, and it remains one of the most practical grassroots solutions to menstrual hygiene access ever developed.

The broader history of the sanitary pad, from Johnson & Johnson's failed 1896 launch to Kotex's mainstream breakthrough to Muruganantham's village-scale machine, is a history of access: who gets it, who doesn't, and what it takes to close that gap.

About Pee Safe

At Pee Safe, we believe that safe, comfortable menstrual hygiene should be accessible to everyone. Our sanitary pads are designed with skin safety and performance in mind, offering options from organic cotton to ultra-thin to biodegradable, so you can choose what works best for your body and your values. Learn more on our about us page.