Scotland Tackles "The Curse"

 

SCOTLAND

No Girl Left Behind

Scotland is tackling women’s rights in a new way – aiming to make sure females don’t fall into “period poverty.”

As Politico recently reported, local lawmakers enacted a law that compels local authorities, schools and other institutions to provide the public with free tampons, sanitary towels and other feminine hygiene products in their bathrooms in the same manner as they might offer running water and toilet paper.

“Periods should never be a barrier to education or push anyone into poverty,” said Monica Lennon, a Labor Party member of the Scottish Parliament who led the push for the new law. “Women, girls and all people who menstruate deserve period dignity.”

Backing up advocates for the law was a Plan International UK study that found that, during the lockdown in Britain, almost a third of girls between 14 and 21 years old faced challenges finding access to sanitary products.

Scotland’s move led many to question whether similar legislation might pass elsewhere in the world.

While Scotland is the first jurisdiction in the world to make feminine hygiene products free, some countries have banned the “tampon tax” – the value-added tax imposed on sanitary products. In Europe, Ireland is the only country with no tampon tax. Meanwhile, Hungary imposes a 27 percent tax rate on tampons, the highest in the bloc. In the US, seven states exempt the products from local sales taxes, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.

Still, for some Scots, the issue was emotional – it was a move that symbolically represented the public acceptance of a bodily function that traditionally has been regarded as taboo, the BBC explained. “It just feels as if you’re valued as a woman,” Inga Dale, a 30-year-old Edinburgh resident, told the Lily, a Washington Post publication. “You are free to have your period, and it’s not something you should be ashamed of.”

For others, the legislation prompted political humor, a common way to deal with a potentially sensitive subject. Critics of the measure within the Scottish National Party, which rules local government, warned that traders might take the free feminine products and sell them across the border to the south, in England, for example.

“Just wait till the cross-border tampon raids begin, just as the SNP foretold,” wrote Holyrood, a Scottish current affairs magazine, in a satirical flourish, referring to the raiding of centuries past of livestock. “Cheer the bill while you can because the tampon reivers [or raiders] are on their way up from England as we speak. Loading up their horses. You never thought you’d see the day, did you? Like a modern version of cattle rustling, except with sanitary pads.”

The raids haven’t occurred yet but the idea has spread fast. That’s because, as some say quoting Victor Hugo, it’s an idea whose time has come.