Free Sanitary Products on Campus

Female students at The University of Birmingham will have access to free sanitary products after a successful campaign by a student union officer.

Daisy Lindlar, the sabbatical Guild representation and resources officer, who has since been crowned the ‘Queen of Tampons’ decided to take action in her own hands following the Parliamentary ‘tampon tax’ debate this week. Which rejected the proposed reduction in the current five per cent VAT rate by MPs 305 to 287 votes.

Writing in a blog post for The Huffington Post, Lindlar described how Parliament is "dominated by people without wombs."

According to Lindlar one of the most frustrating aspects of the "tampon tax" is the fact that it classess sanitary products as "non-essential, luxury items" she says, "This puts them in the same tax bracket as alcoholic jellies, crocodile meat and edible sugar flowers."

Most women would agree that periods are most definitely not a luxury or something you have any choice at all with.

The university’s Guild of Students took to Facebook to describe how periods can be ‘expensive’, adding: “To start with, there’s the cost of tampons or towels. On top of this, anyone with a uterus will also be familiar with the associated cost of paracetamol, pyjamas, underwear, bed sheets and the odd sweet treat to get you through the month. Sometimes there's even the loss of work-time and class or lecture attendance to add to the bill.”

Encouraging open dialogue over a topic which, she said, is still taboo, Lindlar added: “They're seen as an embarrassment, a source of shame, and something we should keep quiet about. This needs to stop.”

Now, in order to ease the financial burden on female students, which Lindlar said for someone earning minimum wage, means spending roughly 38 full working days of earnings on tampons and towels alone. The Guild officer has managed to order hundreds of sanitary items which are now available free of charge for University of Birmingham students.

Lindlar added in the blog post: “I urge other unions to follow suit and provide free sanitary products to their students.”

Other universities have started their own initiatives for example the University of Sussex Students’ Union hands out free sanitary products every Wednesday and, last year, the University of East Anglia Students’ Union announced it was going ‘profit free’ on the ‘essential’ and ‘crucial’ products by selling them at cost price.