“Period Tax” galvanizes new battle lines for freedom and democracy

Earlier this year, President Irfaan Ali announced that all feminine hygiene products will no longer be subjected to taxes in Guyana. These products include menstrual pads and tampons.
Menstrual pads were VAT zero-rated before 2025, but as of earlier this year, all other taxes, including excise taxes, have been removed. Guyana became one of a handful, but a growing number, of countries that are removing all taxes linked to menstrual pads and other feminine hygiene products and adding these items to the public sector medicine and medical supplies list to be procured by the Ministry of Health for distribution to girls through health centers.
Guyana’s First Lady has been championing feminine hygiene products as a human rights issue since 2020. While it is still a work in progress, Guyana is ensuring that menstrual health packages become a public good in our country. While health centers often do not have enough supplies, Guyana has taken the lead in ensuring that menstrual health packages are treated as a public good and a fundamental human right.
A young Pakistani female lawyer, Mahnoor Omer, is urging global governments to recognize menstrual health as a fundamental human right, and that menstrual care packages should not and must not be subjected to taxation. She has sued the Government of Pakistan for gender discrimination for subjecting menstrual pads to taxation.
Omer is challenging the country’s “period” tax, which she alleges causes prices to increase by about 40%, making period pads unaffordable for the average Pakistani girl or woman. UNICEF found in a study that only about 16% of girls and women in rural Pakistan use menstrual or period pads.
Omer cites the exemption of taxes for products such as cattle semen, milk, and cheese because they are essential products. She argues that sanitary, period, or menstrual care pads, whichever designation we might prefer, are just as essential – if not more essential -than cattle semen, milk, and cheese. By omitting menstrual care sanitary pads from the list for exemption from taxation, the Pakistan government is, in fact, taxing girls’ and women’s periods. By taxing these sanitary pads, Omer claims the Pakistan government is treating an essential female product as a luxury item, depriving women and girls of their dignity and placing their health at severe risk.
Even without taxation, in most developing countries, sanitary pads are unaffordable for most girls and women. With taxation, unaffordability becomes so burdensome that many girls and women in these countries do without. Omer’s legal claims state that the high cost of menstrual products “aggravates the economic and social disadvantages already faced by women, amounting to indirect gender discrimination. “ Her case is based on the argument that “ if women are being taxed for a biological function, that means they are being robbed of their dignity.”
Omer, like millions of people around the world and every public health specialist, argues that the “period” tax, also called the “pink” or “tampon” tax, disproportionately affects people who menstruate. They demand that sanitary pads are essential hygiene products that should be tax-exempt, similar to other necessary goods like groceries or medicine.
Omer is making the same argument as President Irfaan Ali and the PPP government. Unlike the Pakistan government and many other governments around the world, the PPP government in Guyana not only believes that sanitary pads are essential female hygiene products, they have done something about it. In Guyana, there are zero taxes on sanitary pads, and female hygiene pads are available free of charge at public health centers. Scotland has made period pads free for some time now.
Several countries in CARICOM have also removed taxes on sanitary pads. For example, zero VAT on sanitary pads does not apply in Trinidad and Tobago, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Jamaica. Around the world, countries like Australia, Bhutan, Canada, the US, the UK, India, Ireland, Colombia, Kenya, Lebanon, Lesotho, the Maldives, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda are among a growing list of countries that have decided to treat sanitary pads as essential health products.
Girls and women who menstruate represent about half of the global population. This half of the global population requires these products for about three to four decades of their lives. Lack of access to sanitary products affects women’s and girls’ dignity, access to health care, education, work, and participation in public activities. This leads to menstrual poverty and is a prime example of systematic gender subordination and the segregation of women’s needs. Taxing menstrual products is a punishment against women for a God-given biological activity. This is not just unfair; it is a blatant sexist tax, a clear and plain economic prejudice against women.
Increasingly, civil society groups led by women and girls around the world are rising up and rejecting this unequivocal assault on women’s rights. These groups see the elimination of taxation on menstrual products as critical to promoting gender equity, female empowerment, human rights, and menstrual justice. An example of period poverty becoming a political battle line is in Colombia. A political campaign called Menstruacion Libre (Free Menstruation) advocated for the elimination of menstrual product taxes. In response, the Supreme Court of Colombia exempted taxes on menstrual pads and tampons in 2018. Omer has precedent on her side in Pakistan.
Other examples of political activism leading to the removal of taxes on sanitary pads include #MenstruaciónDignaMéxico (Menstruation with Dignity) in Mexico, Inua Dada in Kenya, Days for Girls in Kenya, Free Periods in England, Qrate in South Africa, We Need to Talk in Turkey, She for She Pads in Uganda, Myna Mahila in India, Herself in Brazil, With Red in Taiwan, and many more.
Menstrual justice is becoming another frontline battle for freedom and democracy. Guyana is standing on the right side of menstrual justice.