womensproject

[womensproject]

Important definitions

Luxury: a material object, service, etc., conducive to sumptuous living, usually a delicacy, elegance, or refinement of living rather than a necessity:

Tampon Tax:  a tax on feminine products such as tampons, pads, panty liners, etc. This tax applies to many states aside from New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Oregon, Montana, New Hampshire, Nevada, Florida, Connecticut, Illinois, and Alaska. Human necessities are excluded from taxes like food and medicine but many states still tax feminine products as a luxury item.

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Is eliminating tampon tax important?

Eliminating the tampon tax is important to many families because it’s essentially taxing women for having a uterus and vagina. The typical woman spends about $120 a year on feminine products, not including heating pads and medicine that helps with period symptoms. Which can be an additional $100 a year or even more. If a woman has her period once a month for about 40 years she roughly spends about $4,800 just on pads and tampons throughout her life. Imagine the money from that is going solely to taxes. Not to mention if a mother has daughters who also need these products and it can get really expensive really fast. Why should women pay this tax for a product that is a necessity? Pads and tampons aren’t cheap, to begin with being around $10 per box. Especially when some women are struggling just to put food on their plate let alone buy expensive feminine products that are taxed. Having this tax is financially penalizing women for being a woman and having natural body functions. I included the definition of luxury so you could compare it to the tampon tax. Having a period is definitely not a luxury ask any woman if they enjoy having their period every month. Let alone wanting to spend their money on feminine products with being taxed on top of it. Being able to have devices like pads and tampons during menstruation to do tasks and perform a normal day shouldn’t be deemed as a luxury item. Many people call this tax the pink tax, basically the tax of being a woman. Many companies will market certain things towards women that are the same product as the men marketed one but will make the women's product more expensive. Not to mention in most states viagra and lube are not taxed. Why are viagra and lube deemed a necessity when it’s definitely not. Is it because society values men’s wants over women's needs? If viagra and lube aren’t taxed then tampons definitely should not have a tax. These materials are used for sex which is not essential, compared to periods that come even if you want them or not. Anyone can clearly see that society takes advantage of women financially. On average men tend to make a lot more money than women in the workforce so why take advantage of women when in general they are going to have less money than men. If I was a smart businessman I would try to scheme men because they have the money, but I feel like women are looked down upon and people think they're easy to take advantage of. Getting rid of this tampon tax would make women more equal to men. It would show that society cares about women's needs and that these products are indeed crucial to have for most women. If this tampon tax is eliminated women would be saving money that they could put towards other things. This would especially help the woman that are already struggling.

[womensproject]

I added this video that period equity made because I feel like it really portrays how the government and society is making tampons seem.

[womensproject]

Source of change

https://www.periodequity.org/  

The two main founders of this website are Jennifer Weiss-Wolf and Laura Strausfeld. Jennifer is the author of periods gone public and believes this book could help tell the story of a political movement for menstrual equality. She is also on the board of many women supporting groups like Girls Helping Girls, Support the girls and others. Laura the co-founder researched the illegality of tampon tax as a Columbia Law student. Laura has done a lot of research on women's health and environmental toxins. Their goal is to achieve menstrual equity. They do this by traditional tools of laws, policy, legal advocacy and through social media. They also partner with many journalists to keep these issues broadcasted on the news. I think that this organization is doing a great job at getting these women's stories and ideas out there. They are also very credible they’ve worked with scientists, city councils and journalists to help make menstrual equality happen.

[womensproject]

Informational source

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/us/tampon-tax.html Informational resource

This source is an American newspaper with a big following. I think it’s valuable that this newspaper is covering topics like the tampon tax because they are really well known. This article goes over what states do and don’t have a tampon tax and goes over some key ideas pertaining to menstrual equality. Since it’s a popular newspaper I’m sure these ideas will reach a lot of people.

[womensproject]

Informational source

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/08/the-tampon-tax-explained/

This source is also a well known American newspaper. This story follows a woman named Cristina Garcia and how she got involved in introducing legislation that would make feminine products like pads and tampons tax-free. I feel like this source helps woman feel like anybody can help change women's rights even an everyday average person like Cristina. This source also nice because it’s so well known and a lot of people will see this story. It may even inspire some people to get involved.

[womensproject]

Source of change

https://www.mylola.com/pages/about

LOLA is an organic feminine care company. They work on giving women organic, safe, cost-effective material for periods. LOLA also along with Period Equity is launching a campaign to eliminate tampon tax in all 50 states by the hopes of 2020. On this company's website, it shows you ways you can help eliminate the tampon tax in the United States. It even lets you join their email group to stay up to date with the progress of eliminating the tampon tax. I feel like this company can be very successful in helping the tampon tax since they are starting to provide affordable period products. Another way I feel like they are making a change is by raising money to have campaigns to try to make the tampon tax go away.

[womensproject]

Informational source

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37365286

The BBC news is a well-known news channel and website. It gets lots of publicity which helps get the tampon tax subject get out there. In this particular article, it helps us see more of the political side of the tampon tax. A strong suite of this website was when it was explaining that some people use periods as an insult. It uses an example with Donald Trump saying something about a woman and that she must be on her period but in a more grotesque way. Periods should not be an insult with nearly half of the population being females, who have periods monthly. Overall I think this website does a good job of getting the political side of the issue out to people.

[womensproject]

Informational source

https://taxfoundation.org/tampon-taxes-sales-tax/

The tax foundation is a government agency. This goes over more of the facts and math of eliminating the tampon tax. It goes over each state's sales tax and how it would affect the economy if tampons are tax-free. I feel like this site is important because it crunches the numbers. It also doesn’t really choose a side, it leaves it up to you to decide what is right.

[womensproject]

Source of change

https://www.change.org/p/u-s-state-legislators-stop-taxing-our-periods-period

Chang.org is a non-profit website that gives updates on what is happening with the period tax. It also has many other petitions on its website not pertaining to the period tax. It lets you sign the petition to abolish the period tax. It even lets you write on their website in the comment section allowing you to interact with other women or men who support this cause. There’s not a set group of members because anyone can join. I feel like anyone can join makes the website even better because anyone who wants to get involved can.

[womensproject]

Informational source

https://lawreview.richmond.edu/files/2019/02/CrawfordWaldman-532.pdf

This source is a college study report. It goes very into the logistics and all different sides of the tampon tax. It is from the University of Richmond Law. I feel like this source is pretty sturdy because they have a lot of information on the topic. Also, you know a student took a lot of time to find this information and make a great insightful study. It helps people who want a substantial amount of information on the tampon tax.

[womensproject]

Source of change

https://www.theunitedstateofwomen.org/blog/no-tax-tampons

This website does a very good job at letting you know what is going on with the tampon tax. It is organized by The United State of Women. There are many members that are involved in this website. One woman that is involved is Joyce Beatty who is a congresswoman who represents the 3rd district of Ohio and serves on the House Committee on financial services. She is also a member of two other Subcommittees. Another woman that is part of this website is Luvvie Ajayi she is a public speaker, author and she founded her own blog called awesomelyluvvie.com. She is also a New York Times bestseller with her book The Do-Better Manuel. There are many other strong women that are apart of this organization but one last one is Michelle Carter. Michelle Carter is a gold medalist from the Rio Olympics and is also a certified makeup artist. I like that this website has so many independent women who support the United State of Woman and contribute to help get rid of the tampon tax.

[womensproject]

Source of change

https://www.girlsglobe.org/

Girls Globe is a website that supports women. Anyone who wants to can be a member of this website. You can get involved and write your own articles and issues that women are dealing with. Gabriella Rocha Rios is the author of the Menstrual equality section for this website. She touches on how the tampon taxes affect women and the things they are doing to make changes on the situation. They also have many partners like Johnson& Johnson, Water Aid, Global Citizen and a bunch more who financially support them. I like that anyone can add to this website and that they want to get more people involved in Girls Globe.

[womensproject]

Vision Statement

  I think in the sometime near future tampon tax will be non-existent in all fifty states. I think eventually some of the bigger groups against tampon tax especially the Period Equity group will be a big part in abolishing this tax. I think this because they are teamed up with other big companies that support them in getting rid of the tampon tax. The Period Equity group has fundraisers and accepts donations which helps to be able to advertise so much. They have already accomplished a lot and have a campaign for this issue. They are good about getting information about this tax out there in magazines, their website, and the news. One thing I would like to see happen is more community or smaller groups supporting cutting the tampon tax out. When researching this topic it was hard to find smaller, local groups who are helping this cause. I understand that most local people are supporters of the bigger campaigns but I feel like if they were to step up, the tampon tax can get abolished sooner.  If people from their community got together locally they could discuss different ways they could make the tampon tax get eliminated. They could even start in their community raising awareness and seeing if they could get some of the stores in their town to cut the tax on tampons or make more affordable feminine products. If every town did this the tampon tax could get eliminated way faster instead of just waiting for the more established and big companies to do this work. The more people that join and engage in this movement the faster it will get resolved. Women can’t just wait around for the tampon tax to get cut they should take charge and demand that there are no taxes on the necessity of feminine care products. If everyone did their part in this the government would have to take this tax into consideration. After all, they are taxing half the United States population on necessity items, aside from the states that have already gotten this tax eliminated. Another thing I would like to see is more talk about feminine care in schools. Periods are very taboo in our culture when they shouldn’t be. Women should not be ashamed of their natural bodies and how they work. If we talked about this more openly maybe we would never have had a tampon tax in the first place because people would have realized tampons, pads and panty liners are not a luxury.