"this country" is Pakistan

This will be uplifting when and only when she succeeds. Until then it's merely hopeful.

I don't say this to minimise what she's trying to do. I hope she succeeds. But she has a hell of a mountain to climb. It's not that long since VAT* was eradicated on those products here in the UK, supposedly a modern, forward-thinking nation.

She's in Pakistan. There's a lot more religious and cultural misogyny to fight there.

* Value Added Tax. Roughly equivalent to both "sales tax" and "luxury tax" elsewhere.

they ask their daughters to pretend to pray so that the men in the family, especially the husband or the brothers of that child, won't know that she is of fertile age now. Because as soon as they know that the girl has started menstruating, they're going to pull her out of the school, if she goes there, and they're going to marry her off to a man double or thrice her age. And that is something we have seen so often. It just breaks my heart. Mothers are usually very helpless in these situations. The link to child marriage contributes to the secrecy around periods and makes it an extremely isolating experience.

As a guy I hadn't really made that connection to how menstruation would become so stigmatized. Thats gutwrenching...

How is that not considered, like, a medical item or whatever?

I wish her the best. We're also taxed the same for menstrual products in the US.

btw did y'all hear that in 2024 the first

the FIRST

study that measured metals in tampons from multiple brands revealed that they contain SEVERAL toxic metals including arsenic, lead and mercury?

This feels like an orphan grinding machine kind of thing :/