New York City is set to become the first major city in the United States to provide all females with free pads and tampons in public schools, prisons and homeless shelters.
On Tuesday, June 21, the city's council made a unanimous vote of 49-0 in favor of the new bill, which now awaits the signature of Mayor Bill de Blasio. The mayor expressed his support for the movement on Facebook and Twitter.
That historic day, Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, a member of the New York City Council, whipped out a tiny, wrapped tampon and waved it in the air in an act of defiance against period stigma and taboo.
"They're as necessary as toilet paper," said Ferreras-Copeland, who has long been fighting in the quest for "menstrual equity."
Her proposal, which was co-sponsored by Council members Melissa Mark-Viverito, Ydanis Rodriguez and Daniel Dromm, would make tampons and pads freely available for 300,000 New York City schoolgirls and 23,000 women in public homeless shelters.
Indeed, the bill will directly affect students who typically miss class because they do not have a tampon or a pad, mothers at homeless shelters, as well as women in prison who need access to these important yet often overlooked products, says Ferreras-Copeland.
In correctional institutions, women are often given limited supplies of generic hygiene products. Advocates say that the options for women in prisons are at times inadequate, scarce and dehumanizing.
The new legislative package, which would provide approximately 2 million tampons and 3.5 million pads every year just for homeless shelters, will change that. It will take up about $2.5 million in the city's $82 billion budget.
New York City Council's decision follows a national discussion about the expensive prices of menstrual products, which some advocates call "womanhood penalty."
Most states in the country identify tampons and pads as nonessential items and therefore tax them. Because of that, outrage surfaced online and elsewhere over what critics called a "discriminatory tampon tax."
President Barack Obama lambasted the expensive cost of menstrual products in an interview with YouTube vlogger Ingrid Nilsen. He said he suspects that it is so because men were making those laws when the taxes were passed.
In May, NY state lawmakers agreed to remove the sales tax on feminine hygiene products, becoming the sixth state in the country to do so.
Meanwhile, in support of the new bill, Mayor de Blasio posted a video on Facebook explaining why it is important.
"Because tampons and pads aren't luxuries," said de Blasio. "They're necessities."
Photo: Eric E. Castro | Flickr
