international women's day 2020 x sanitree: menstrual products are a right, not a privilege

Last Tuesday, Sanitree stood in solidarity with Monica Lennon MSP, champion of the Free Period Products Bill, and asked the Scottish Government to make menstrual products free for all. Although the Bill was accepted at Stage 1, the fight isn’t over. International and domestic press reporting made it seem like the Bill had been passed at its final stage, a dangerous thing in allowing the Scottish Government to avoid the pressure of seeing this Bill through.  

Sanitree’s work on period poverty and the stigma surrounding menstruation goes back to January 2018 when, after the University of Edinburgh founded a co-operative which employs women from vulnerable backgrounds to sew and sell reusable sanitary pads was set up in the hometown of our founder, Bhind - Madhya Pradesh India. Since then, we have expanded to Jaipur to set up another center and developed our political campaigning and advocacy work to our birthplace, Scotland.   

With initial opposition to the Bill from the Scottish Government, our Free for all. Period. campaign was rolled out around the University of Edinburgh. As students, we have greatly benefited from the free provisions scheme and the 2018 Bill has hugely increased access to education.   

Now is the time to stand with the wider Scottish community who have yet to access these benefits. 

A 2017 survey by Plan International found that 1 in 10 menstruators in the UK are unable to afford period products. In Scotland, this figure is closer to 1 in 5.  

Period poverty is a deep-rooted issue which affects some of the most marginalised people in society. When universal access was piloted in 2017-18 in Aberdeen, it was found that the majority of the beneficiaries of the service were unemployed people, as well as people struggling with benefit payments, or experiencing disability or illness. 

Period poverty is insidious, often invisible and engenders shame and indignity for those who suffer it. People affected by homelessness, coercive, controlling and violent relationships and health conditions such as endometriosis (affecting 1 in 10 women) all suffer. Trans and nonbinary menstruators also experience difficulties and heightened stigma in accessing period products. 

We are the 5th richest country in the world yet we’re not providing for something that is not a choice but a biological reality for over half the population. 

Clearly, more radical action is needed to reflect the true scale of period poverty in Scotland today. 

There is no rights provision in the current bill, meaning that students across Scotland are still not legally entitled to free period products. The new bill would both introduce a universal provision scheme and enshrine this as a right in Scottish law.  

Access to menstrual products should be a universal right, not a privilege.  

No one should have to suffer the indignity and shame of period poverty and what’s more, no one should be turning a blind eye to this issue. 

This International Women’s Day, I ask you to stand with those who need it the most. Keep up the pressure. Help us mark a crucial step in ending period poverty and championing the fundamental values of health, dignity, and equality for all.  

Let’s make menstrual products free for all. Period.  

Sanitree is a social enterprise that was established in 2017 by undergraduate students at the University of Edinburgh, with a Jaipur-based co-operative. Learn more at www.sanitree.org.

Illustration by Jocelin Chan.