When Senator Gloria Orwoba walked into Parliament with a stained trouser, many castigated her, but the millions of women and girls who lack sanitary pads and have suffered the shame of staining their clothes could identify with her as she was telling their story.
Every year, millions of women and girls, spend 84 days that is 2.8 months out of a productive system including school as they deal with menstrual health issues in the absence of sanitary pads and other challenges that come with monthly periods.
In many parts of Kenya, girls and women, sit out on rocks as their monthly flow is in process due to lack of sanitary pads. Others use rags or leaves which do not allow them to go anywhere because of fear of staining themselves and other cultural restrictions that make menstruation the worst shameful thing on earth.
The shame and poverty of menstruation has never been truly exposed as the time when the Senator walked into Parliament with a stained trouser. It has been made worse with the proposal to impose tax on sanitary pads.
Almost more than 20 years ago, after a lot of campaign by women’s rights advocates, Kenya was able to embrace a gender responsive budgeting system. This budget allowed issues that are of concern to women and girls, a special constituency to be catered for within the budget system.
The gender responsive budgeting system ensured equitable rights, dealing with inequalities in the social, economic and political sphere as faced by women and girls. One of the things that the budget catered for, was money being set aside for sanitary pads.
No Tax on Sanitary Pads
According to UNESCO: Gender responsive budgeting is a means of integrating a gender perspective into all steps of the budget process — planning, drafting, implementing and evaluating — so as to ensure that budget policies take into consideration the gender issues in society.
Also Read: Sh12 Billion Needed to Fund Free Sanitary Towels Project
In 2004, Kenya repealed its value added tax on pads and tampons to lower the price consumers pay. And since 2011, the Kenyan government has been budgeting about $3 million per year to distribute free sanitary pads in schools in low-income communities.
Through these funds given to the Ministry of Education, pads are bought and dispatched to schools for girls to get them for free. This worked for some time in public schools where a teacher was made in charge of distributing the pads.
Sadly, for some schools, male teachers were made in charge, and this formed another barrier, as girls feared facing a man to ask for the pads when they needed them.
Already the cost of sanitary pads is out of reach for many women and girls. A good quality sanitary pad costs about Ksh200 ($1.5).
The initiative not to tax sanitary pads, seems to have been eroded by this new call to tax sanitary pads. Where will the women and girls get reprieve from if the sanitary pads are taxed? Already in many families, the decision to choose between buying sanitary pads and a packet of maize meal is already tilted towards the latter.
With a taxation on pads, it means it will now be out of means to many women and girls. Most families do not care if their daughters have pads because it’s not a priority.
Menstruation Conundrum
Many girls are forced to have sex with men to get the little money they require for the pads. Will the situation get worse with the tax? Definitely.
Also Read: Orwoba, Nyamu Kicked Out Senate for Indecent, Inappropriate Dress Codes
The government needs to relook the idea of taxing pads and trash it. We must as a country, stop putting our women and girls in a situation that makes them vulnerable in getting essential products such as sanitary pads.
Currently in Parliament there is a bill that seeks to have a law on sanitary pads. The Provision of Sanitary Towels Bill seeks to have government provide for free, good quality and sufficient sanitary pads in public institutions and correctional facilities and establish an inter-ministerial committee on sanitary pads and connected porpoises.
It beats logic that with such a bill on the floor of the house, someone else is being naughty to seek taxation of sanitary pads.
Menstruation cannot be a ball for political players to play with. Menstruation cannot be gambled with even as the country seeks to meet its budget requirements.
Both male and female members of parliament, must sit and rethink and not gamble with the menstruation of women and girls in Kenya.
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