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Scotland became the world’s first country to establish the right for women to obtain free sanitary products as landmark legislation took effect Monday.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The Period Products Act requires councils, schools, colleges and universities to make the items freely available to anyone who needs them to combat a phenomenon known as period poverty. Monica Lennon, the lawmaker who led the campaign for the initiative to become law, described it as “a big milestone for period dignity campaigners and grassroots movements which shows the difference that progressive and bold political choices can make.”
Campaigners and politicians said rising costs were making the issue more significant. Georgie Nicholson, a campaigner with Hey Girls, the developer of an app that helps users locate free sanitary products, told BBC Radio that before the Covid-19 pandemic one in four women in Scotland didn’t have enough money to buy the items at one time or another.
“This is more important than ever at a time when people are making difficult choices due to the cost of living crisis,” said Shona Robison, Scotland’s social justice secretary.
Activists said they hoped the rest of the U.K. would soon follow Scotland’s lead.
The legislation, first passed in 2020 with unanimous cross-party support, came two years after Scotland’s government began providing sanitary products free of charge in schools, colleges and universities.
In the U.S., students have been campaigning for schools to provide menstrual products in bathrooms free of charge. There is also a growing campaign to eliminate taxes on tampons and pads across the U.S. Period Equity, a nonprofit, estimates that 26 states that had sales taxes on menstrual products received around $120 million in revenue from the levies each year.
