No — he invented a low-cost machine for manufacturing sanitary pads in India in the early 2000s, which made local, affordable production possible. The sanitary pad itself had existed commercially since the late 1800s, roughly a century earlier.
Who really invented the sanitary pad?
There's no single inventor. The modern disposable sanitary pad grew out of a World War I medical material called Cellucotton, which battlefield nurses started using off-label for their own periods because it was far more absorbent than cloth. Kimberly-Clark noticed the pattern and turned it into the first commercially successful pad, Kotex, in 1920 — nearly a century before Arunachalam Muruganantham's low-cost pad-making machine, which is a different, later invention entirely.
Quick facts
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No credited single inventor — the pad evolved through several companies over decades, not one person's breakthrough
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1888–1896: Southall Brothers & Barclay (UK) and Johnson & Johnson's "Lister's Towels" (US) were among the earliest commercial sanitary towels — both were held in place with a separate belt and sold quietly, often through mail order, because of the era's taboo around menstruation
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1920: Kimberly-Clark launched Kotex, the first sanitary pad to be mass-marketed and openly advertised — built from surplus Cellucotton, the wood-pulp bandage material WWI nurses had originally repurposed
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1969–1972: the adhesive strip arrived (Stayfree), finally removing the need for a separate sanitary belt
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2000s, India: Arunachalam Muruganantham invented a low-cost machine for manufacturing sanitary pads locally and affordably — not the sanitary pad itself, which had existed for 80+ years by then
Myth vs fact
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Myth |
Fact |
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"Arunachalam Muruganantham invented the sanitary pad." |
He invented a low-cost pad-manufacturing machine in India in the early 2000s, letting rural self-help groups produce affordable pads locally. The sanitary pad itself had already existed commercially since the late 1800s. His story was popularised globally by the 2018 film Padman. |
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"The pad was invented by one scientist in a lab." |
It wasn't a single-inventor breakthrough — it emerged from WWI nurses improvising with surplus medical bandages, which a company then commercialised. Credit sits with an accidental discovery and a marketing decision, not one name. |
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"Pads have always looked and worked the way they do now." |
The belt-and-pin pad was standard until 1969–72; the adhesive strip that lets a pad stick directly to underwear is barely 50 years old. |
The actual timeline
Long before any commercial product, people managed periods with cloth, wool, moss, or papyrus depending on region and era — none of it disposable, all of it reused and washed. The shift toward a manufactured, throwaway product started quietly in the late 19th century: firms in the UK and the US began selling "sanitary towels," but they were marketed in hushed, coded language because menstruation was considered an unmentionable subject even in advertising.
The real turning point was accidental. During World War I, Kimberly-Clark had developed a cheap, highly absorbent wood-pulp material called Cellucotton for surgical bandages. Battlefield nurses noticed it worked far better than cloth for their own periods and started using surplus bandages that way. When the war ended, Kimberly-Clark had a warehouse of Cellucotton and no more army contracts — so in 1920, it repackaged the same material as Kotex, the first sanitary pad advertised openly to consumers. That's the product usually meant when people ask "who invented the sanitary pad": not an inventor in the traditional sense, but a company that recognised a wartime accident had a peacetime market.
The design kept evolving from there — pads were held on with a separate elastic belt for another 50 years, until an adhesive strip finally let the pad stick directly to underwear in the early 1970s, which is closer to the shape of a modern pad.
Arunachalam Muruganantham's story, made famous by the film Padman, is a genuinely separate chapter. His contribution wasn't inventing the pad — it was inventing a way to manufacture pads cheaply, on a small machine that self-help groups across rural India could operate themselves, making affordable pads accessible in places where branded products were too expensive or simply unavailable. That's a real and significant innovation in access, distinct from the invention of the product itself.
FAQ's
Did Arunachalam Muruganantham really invent the sanitary pad?
Why is Kotex usually cited as the "first" sanitary pad?
Kotex, launched by Kimberly-Clark in 1920, was the first pad to be openly and successfully advertised to the public, using surplus Cellucotton material developed for WWI bandages. Earlier commercial pads existed but were sold discreetly and never reached the same scale.
When did pads stop needing a separate belt?
The adhesive strip that lets a pad stick directly to underwear arrived with Stayfree's 1969–1972 launch, replacing the sanitary belt that had been standard for the previous 50 years.