Contrary to the popular belief of many governments around the world, tampons and feminine hygiene products are not luxury items.
Considering sanitary products for menstrual periods are essential to women’s health and are recognized as a human right by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, governments all around the world should take note and follow suit.
Tampons and all feminine hygiene products should be free.
For all female-bodied people that experience menstrual periods, having a menstrual cycle means having unavoidable expenses and complications surrounding the control of that menstrual cycle.
For example, for females in countries where menstrual products are not available or too expensive, many young women have to miss school because they have no way to control their menstrual flow.
The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund estimates 10 percent of women in Africa miss school due to having their period, leading to an increased dropout rate for women.
A study in Bangladesh reported 73 percent of women who work in factories miss an average of six working days, or six days of paid work, because of their periods.
Not having access to menstrual products is even graver than missing school or work.
Many women get severe vaginal infections from using menstrual products that are not sanitary.
This is ridiculous. There is no reason for these women to miss work or school or risk bacterial infection all because of the cost of menstrual products.
If you think these events are only happening in poorer countries, America is here to prove us all wrong.
Free access to menstrual products for low-income women is pretty much non-existent and food stamps won’t cover it, so many women sell their food stamps to pay for menstrual products.
That literally means women are forgoing food, in order to afford menstrual products. Women in United States’ prisons are forced to go without menstrual products altogether more often than not.
Women in the United Kingdom are forced to pay a 5 percent tax on tampons, which are actually labeled as “luxury” items, while men’s razors are not.
While the U.S. does not outright label menstrual products as luxury items, these products are not exempt from sales tax in most states. There are only a handful of states that either have no sales tax or do not tax menstrual products.
But breast pumps, vasectomies and artificial teeth are all considered things that should be tax exempt when none of those things are as vital to health as menstrual products.
Making feminine hygiene into big business is like making women pay for having a period. Adding tax onto that cost is just like adding insult to injury.
Menstrual care is an essential to health care for women and should be in the same vein as birth control.
Women should not have to worry about how they are going to control the flow of their periods when they have to live in the world and worry about so many other aspects of life.
Yes, having a period will take up significant mental space with or without free menstrual products.
However, women will have to worry less about spending so much money on menstrual products if those products are labeled as essential to female human function and become free.
rcm2@umail.iu.edu
@RachelCMiller1
