Scotland on track to become first country to offer free sanitary products

The Pink Tax measures how much more money women spend per year than men on various products like body wash, razors, and sanitary napkins. A 2015 New York City study estimated that women spend 13 percent more for such products. And while that is absurd on its face, the simple fact that women are charged at all for sanitary products—health necessities—let alone taxed has been the subject of protest by women around the world for a while now. As of this week, however, one country—Scotland—is finally set to become the first to offer women free pads and tampons.

A bill passed with no opposition in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday and will now move on to its next stage, in which MPs can propose amendments. Through a very public debate, the bill is already lifting the stigma of “period poverty” (access to menstrual products), advocates say.

“Menstruation is normal,” Monica Lennon, the bill’s sponsor, said during the debate. “Free universal access to tampons, pads and reusable options should be normal too.”

One in 10 girls in the United Kingdom have been unable to afford period products and 19 percent have resorted to using toilet paper, rags, or newspaper, according to a 2017 survey from Plan International UK. Without proper supplies, girls miss school and women miss work. The use of rags instead can cause infections, and the oft-used toilet paper (which is considered a “necessity” and is not taxed, unlike tampons and pads), ineffective.

“For some reason, period products are regarded by some as a luxury, a luxury for which women should be charged,” Alison Johnstone, a member of parliament, said during debate. “Why is it in 2020 that toilet paper is seen as a necessity but period products aren't?”

In the U.S., 35 states tax tampons and pads, according to NPR. Yet there has been some movement toward eliminating those taxes in recent years. Connecticut, for example, passed a bill in 2016 that killed the tax. At the same time, just this month in Tennessee, during a hearing on inclusion of sanitary products in the state’s annual three-day sales tax holiday, Republican lawmaker Joey Hensley actually worried aloud that there might be a run on tampons and pads if the bill becomes law.

“I would think since it’s a sales tax holiday, there’s really no limit on the number of items anybody can purchase,” Hensley said, according to The Associated Press. “I don’t know how you would limit the number of items someone could purchase.”

Progress around the world to make sanitary products tax-free has been slow. But there has been some success in removing the tax in various countries, including Germany, which cut back a 19 percent tax on the products in November. Pads and tampons were being taxed as “luxury items.” Somehow though, cut flowers and pet goldfish are only taxed at 7 percent because they are legally classified as essential for daily life, according to The Washington Post.

Weighing the necessity of goldfish vs. tampons, journalist Jule Schulte, who started the German petition, told Deutsche Welle: “The fathers of the tampon tax never had a period.”

Clearly.