Vol 9. Period Poverty in South Asia and Sri Lanka's Bleeding Tax
Expanding on the lack of access to menstrual products in South Asia and its connection to female education
For our ninth issue, we touch upon the news in South Asia and look at menstruation and period poverty. Our Sri Lanka Editor Sathya Karunarathne writes on Sri Lanka’s exorbitant tax on sanitary products. Lastly, we wanted to highlight some of the amazing South Asian women that we came across during our work with this newsletter for International Women’s Day. (We’ll spare you the rant over the commodification of women’s day of struggle for another day)
Best,
Bansari Kamdar
P.S. If you enjoy reading about South Asia from a gendered lens, you can subscribe below to our bi-monthly newsletter. (Yes, it is free!)
News from South Asia
Pakistan had its third annual Aurat March this year. The organizers had declared the theme of this year to be “Women’s Health Crisis” and used the platform to raise awareness about the disparate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women. They are now facing online threats and accusations after misinformation spread that a French flag was allegedly paraded during the march. Protestors are being accused of “subscribing to a foreign agenda.” Doctored videos are widely being shared on social media accusing the protestors of blasphemy, an accusation that can not just lead to a prison term but is often an open incitement to violence.
Rosa Abraham, Amit Basole and Surbhi Kesar’s latest paper finds that women are seven times more likely than men to lose jobs cause of COVID-19 in India and eleven times more unlikely to return. Listen to what the author had to say about their findings and the state of female labor in India in Economic Times’ Morning Brief: https://t.co/iiaZCLc55N?amp=1
Female bus conductors in Bhutan are making public transport safer for other women. In South Asia, harassment and abuse in public spaces is all too common. Conductors, who are mostly female, and drivers, who are all male, are briefed on spotting issues like verbal abuse or inappropriate touching on buses. The conductors are taught to confront perpetrators and give victims a helpline number to call and also contact protection services directly for serious cases.
According to the Demographic Health Survey, 1 in 4 ever-partnered women in Maldives have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime, indicating an increase from 1 in 5 women in 2007. This gender-based violence has been further exacerbated due to the pandemic, according to a latest report by UNFPA. To mitigate this, they recommend:
i. Making sexuality education both within and outside schools available
ii. Establishing women’s economic empowerment strategy for GBV prevention
iii. Changing social norms that perpetuate violence against women and children
iv. Ensuring that adequate services for the rehabilitation of perpetrators are introduced and are made accessible at all levels
v. Strengthening the national capacity to use and analyze data for policy advocacySri Lanka will ban the wearing of the burqa and shut more than a thousand Islamic schools, a government minister said on Saturday. It will not be the first country to push for such dress codes for women, many countries across Europe like France and Switzerland have adopted similar “burqa bans.” Sri Lanka’s announcement on the burqa ban comes after a year-long controversy over the government’s policy of mandatory cremation of COVID-19 victims, based on unsubstantiated claims that the bodies would contaminate groundwater. The government reversed its decision recently, amid persistent calls for burial rights from Muslims and Christians as well as condemnation of international bodies including the U.N.
Quick Take: Girlhood, Education and Menstruation
By Bansari Kamdar
An estimated 1.8 billion girls, women, and gender non-binary persons menstruate. This has not changed due to the pandemic. But it has limited their access to basic needs like menstrual materials, safe access to toilets, soap, water, and private spaces.
School closures have also had a huge impact on period poverty as schools are often places for girls to access sanitary products and learn about menstruation. With the discontinuation of subsidized schemes, such as the free distribution of sanitary napkins in schools, menstrual products have become unaffordable, a situation worsened by the financial stress of the pandemic.
Schools are often touchpoints for girls to learn about periods and address stigmas and taboos associated with them. Lack of access to menstrual hygiene products reduces women’s mobility and participation in society and has a direct link with self-perception and mental health.
One in three girls in South Asia miss schools during periods. In most parts of South Asia, menstruation is treated as taboo. There is a culture of silence around periods and women are often excluded from society during this time as they are considered impure.
Most girls in the region know little about their periods. UNICEF found that 66 percent of girls in South Asia didn't know anything about menstruation before their first period.
Religion and cultural norms have placed taboos on menstruating women in every space they occupy—at home, at work, and at places of worship. One study reported that over 89 percent of women in Nepal experience some form of restriction and exclusion during menstruation. In Bhutan, 21 percent thought women susceptible to possession by an evil spirit during menstruation.
Food restrictions during menstruation also affect their nutrition. The 2017 Ritu Baseline Study in Bangladesh found that 96 percent of girls avoided religious activities during menstruation and 59 percent avoided ‘white’ foods like banana, egg, milk. In Pakistan, many girls described poor nutritional intake due to cultural restrictions on foods allowed during menstruation.
In countries like Afghanistan, access to female education already remains low. Nearly 75 percent of primary age children out of school are girls. Their attendance is affected by violence, insecurity, poverty, culture, and a lack of female teachers. Lack of access to menstrual hygiene further limits their access to education.
There have been extensive studies on school absenteeism and menstruation. One survey in Sri Lanka found that 60 percent of parents refuse to send their girls to school while they are menstruating. A study on cervical cancer risk factors in India also found a direct link between the use of cloth during menstruation and the development of cervical cancer - the second-most common type of cancer among Sri Lankan women today.
Access to menstrual products remains expensive in South Asia and varies by region. According to a study in West Bengal, India, only 11.25 percent of girls used disposable feminine hygiene products. The most common obstacles to accessing these products were a lack of awareness, the high cost, the lack of availability and the need for disposal facilities.
Given that many women and girls use reusable clothes over sanitary napkins, they need to sanitize the clothes through clean water and dry them in sunlight. Nevertheless, given the cultural taboos around menstruation, they often dry them in dark places, risking infection.
More than half the schools in low-income countries either lack sufficient toilets for girls or are frequently not very clean. Lack of sanitation infrastructure for women is a major hurdle in South Asia. For those with access to disposable sanitary napkins, there are few facilities to get rid of them. Nearly 86 percent of girls in Bangladesh did not change their sanitary protection while at school, mostly because of having no proper changing room.
In one district in Nepal, there was just one toilet for every 170 girls. The region falls short of the World Health Organization standard of one toilet for every 25 girls. In Bangladesh, the toilet to schoolgirl ratio remains high at one toilet for every 187 girls.
In informal settlements, common in the urban landscape of South Asia and its burgeoning cities, women and girls already marginalized across multiple axes of class, caste, and gender face daily struggles to claim recognition and access to the city’s resources.
Deep Dive: Sri Lanka’s Bleeding Tax
by Sathya Karunarathne
Period poverty is no stranger to Sri Lanka. While the term “poor menstrual hygiene management” is more common in the developing world, both terms refer to the lack of access to sanitary products. While sanitary napkins are considered to be the most common menstrual product in Sri Lanka, this definition is inclusive of lack of access to pain management medication, underwear, toilets, disposal facilities, water sanitation facilities and etc.
It is no secret that both urban and rural Sri Lanka is plagued by poor hygiene and sanitation. While this is very much a contributory factor to the problem, exorbitant tariffs on menstrual products take center stage in Sri Lanka’s conundrum of period poverty.
Locally produced sanitary napkins typically sell between Rs. 120-175 in the island and imported sanitary napkins retail up to Rs. 350. If we assume that the average woman has her period for five days and will use four pads a day, and menstruates 2,535 days of her life, which amounts to almost seven years of menstruation, the average Sri Lankan woman will have to spend between Rs. 304,200 - 443,625 on locally produced sanitary towels or Rs. 887,250 on imported sanitary products.
While this may not be a significant expenditure for the wealthy, the economically disempowered woman is further battered by these insensitive aspects of the fiscal policy and is compelled to endure high taxation on a basic biological need.
The Sri Lankan government has made some progress in reducing these high tariffs on sanitary products over the years. However, menstrual products are still categorized as a product of luxury on the island and not a necessity. Before September 2018, sanitary towels and tampons were taxed at a total of 101.2 percent. In September 2018, the CESS component of this tax was repealed by the then Minister of Finance bringing the total tax to 62.5 percent. Following this in November 2019, the tax cut program introduced by the newly elected president resulted in the reduction of the levied VAT. Furthermore, the Nation Building Tax (NBT) was also removed as a part of broader tax reform bringing the total tax to 52 percent.
As commendable as this tax reduction is, it is worthy to note that these ad hoc changes to the total tax levied does not necessarily reflect sincere political will to reduce the financial burden on 51.6% of the population, but is a mere result of general tax reform.
The 2021 budget resulted in the discourse on period poverty taking the limelight once again. The budget revised the general duty for sanitary napkins from 30 percent to 15 percent. Alarmingly, it also introduced a novel CESS of 15 percent. According to the method of tariff calculation that was in place before the 2021 budget, this change would result in a marginal increase in the total tax from 52 percent to 53.6 percent.
The Ministry of Finance in response to the outraged backlash on this tax increase stated that the method of tariff calculation has changed and there is no increase in the total tax levied on sanitary napkins. However, it is worthy to note that with or without a marginal tax increase, menstruating Ceylonese women are still left to be burdened by this monthly financial drain with no relief extended from the new budget.
As a further response to the period poverty caused by these extortionate tariffs, The Ministry of Education stated that they planned to provide free sanitary napkins to approximately 800,000 school children through a three-stage project with priority given to schoolgirls in rural areas in January of 2021.
Unfortunately, no further information or clarity on this has been provided since.
If this policy measure is to be implemented effectively, the government should ideally identify a plan of execution to provide 800,000 schoolgirls with free sanitary napkins that meet global quality and suitability standards throughout their cycle. Even with this policy measure effectively in place, Sri Lanka will still have approximately 3,409,000 menstruating women in need of affordable menstrual products.
It is evident that free distribution of sanitary napkins alone cannot solve the complexity of period poverty. A progressive step towards eradicating Sri Lanka’s period poverty would be to lift protectionist tariffs and ensure the flow of imported products into the market compelling the rent-seeking local producer to lower exorbitant prices to stay price competitive
Reading Recommendations
Samira Sawlani writes in The Juggernaut on the expulsion of thousands of South Asians from Uganda under Idi Amin. She expands on colonialism, Ugandan-Asians, anti-Blackness and these South Asian lives after expulsion.
Professor Alice Evans is back on this with another great detailed analysis on how East Asia overtook South Asia in gender equality. Key claims she lays out:
East and South Asian women were once equally unfree and oppressed
Both faced a trade-off between honour (achieved by restricting women’s freedoms) and income (earned by exploiting female labour). South Asia had a stronger preference for female seclusion, and East Asia a stronger preference for female exploitation
In patriarchal societies, industrialisation and structural transformation are necessary preconditions for the emancipation of women
But industrialisation may not be sufficient. In societies with strong preferences for female seclusion, women may forfeit new economic opportunities so as to preserve family honour.
Yashica Dutt’s award-winning memoir Coming Out As Dalit. The book narrates her relationship with her caste identity over decades and puts her story in a broader social context. It explores the idea of caste in modern day India and the writings and legacy of BR Ambedkar. The personal is political and in telling her story Dutt lays bare the rampant caste discrimination that continues to persist. The author recently won India’s prestigious Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2020 literary award for this book.
Postcards of Courage:
Noor Inayat Khan, Nadia Anjuman, Kamaladevi Chattopadyay, Asma Jahangir, Begum Rokeya, Usha Mehta and Pasang Lahmu Sherpa
(It’s a GIF so you can save it and share these stories with your friends!)
Thank you for reading and supporting us.
Subscribe to us below and send your comments and reading suggestions:
Bansari Kamdar is the founder and managing editor of Newspaperwali. Kamdar is an independent journalist and researcher who works at the Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy and Harvard University’s Center for International Development. She reports on gender, immigration, security, and political economy in South Asia. She has written for The Boston Globe, World Politics Review, The Diplomat, Huffington Post, CNN-News18, and more.Sathya Karunarathne is a researcher at a leading think tank in Sri Lanka. She holds a B.Sc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a degree in English Literature from the University of Sri Jayawardenapura. Her research is based on public policy concerns and enhancing freedom and welfare at large. She has a keen interest in female empowerment and contributes to the sphere of feminist research advocating for equality and female political and economic empowerment.