Bugger a tax cut, tampons should be free

THERE are many essential items in the office workplace — notepads, pens, internet connections. But why aren’t sanitary items like pads and tampons included in that, asks Katy Hall.

DEPENDING on who you ask, the bare minimum one requires to do their job each day can vary quite dramatically.

Where bricklayers need a worksite, safety boots, and a number of tools, journos and other office workers need little more than a computer, an internet connection, and some cheap instant coffee. Then there are the more universal requirements — things like fresh water, an abundance of toilet paper in the loos, and some pens and notepads at the ready. If you’re someone who gets their period, though, at some point throughout your working career you’re also going to need sanitary items. So why aren’t employers providing pads and tampons?

Just as all people with a working bladder will likely need to wee between 9am and 5pm, as someone with functioning ovaries, I have no choice over the fact that occasionally, I menstruate during work hours, sometimes for days at a time. It’s just the luck of the gender-based draw.

With it back in the headlines again this week, it’s now hard to find any politicians who will argue that tampons and pads should have a luxury tax attached to them — Coalition, Greens or Labor — and that’s a good thing. Clearly we’re at a point where everyone knows that five to seven days shedding uterine lining is far from being a luxurious experience. Great. But taxes aside, the question of why these essentials aren’t supplied by employers for their employees remains.

Why aren’t employers providing pads and tampons? (Pic: supplied)

Fundamentally, gender equality in the workplace isn’t about men and women being biologically the same, but rather about all of us starting at the same block and competing within the same race. So it seems reasonable that should some contestants need a pad to help them get to the block and run the best race they can, that it should be provided by those conducting the race. Without it, those competitors are disadvantaged. And disadvantage does not equal equality.

In terms of cost, UK initiative Tampon Club crunched the numbers and found that, depending on the products purchased, supplying tampons and pads to those employees who need it would set back employers as little as $7.50 per person, per year.

$7.50 A YEAR! That, as Darryl Kerrigan would say, is a bloody bargain.

And sure, that’s a cost employers don’t have to pay, but isn’t treating employees with dignity and respect worth it? Also, that $7.50 is substantially less than a year’s supply of morning tea cream biscuits, Friday afternoon beers, and ping pong tables that some employers offer as a perk. And surely, if your budget can stretch to Post-Its, it can stretch to a couple of boxes of tampons.

In providing these items to their employees, workplaces also aren’t losing out. If anything, they’re benefiting. With products at hand whenever employees need them, fewer people have to take out to run off-site to the nearest chemist or spend time conducting covert operations to the desks of others nearby to see if they happen to be harbouring a stash of the good stuff, and if they’re willing to pass it on for free. Less of these underdesk deals equals more productivity. Plus, it will stop us having to double-check the back of our pants every 30 minutes in an unwarranted panic because WHAT IF THERE WAS MAYBE POSSIBLY A LEAK?

Surely, if your budget can stretch to Post-Its, it can stretch to a couple of boxes of tampons. (Pic: supplied)

What many non-period experiencing people don’t realise is that no matter how long you’ve been getting it, every single month that bastard arrives as a surprise, and when you’re least prepared for it. Sometimes it comes right before bed, sometimes at lunch time. Other times it will be one day early, or two days late. Some months it is particularly heavy and you need more products than you have at the ready, other months, you’re cruising.

Either way, without fail, every month you find yourself having an internal conversation that goes something like this: ‘It can’t possibly be that time again. No. Really? F*&k. Is this the backpack with that crumpled half box at the bottom of it? I hope it is. I think there are some mini’s in my desk drawer, but they’ll last for about two seconds. Do I have time to go to the Woolworths before that next meeting? What should I say when Andrew says that he’d love to stretch his legs and he’ll come for a walk with me? Life is cruel and unkind.’

Basically, a period is one long torture device drawn out over several decades, and we’re all just strapped in for the ride, hoping for the best. So do us a solid and help us help ourselves.

Should employers stock bathrooms with sanitary products, you can absolutely bet that some employees will take the mickey and steal some. But the vast majority won’t, for the same reasons that employees don’t steal toilet paper or milk or sugar. Also, we’re menstruaters, not thieves.

Suggesting that these products be provided isn’t some wild feminazi leftist ideology — it’s good business. Because believe it or not, when we have our periods at work, most people don’t want sympathy — we just want to get on with it, do our jobs, and be as comfortable as possible. But in order to do that, some of us need tampons and pads from time to time.

And they should be sitting there, alongside the highlighters and stapler refills.

Katy Hall is a writer and producer at RendezView.

Follow her on Twitter @katyhallway.

Originally published as Bugger a tax cut, tampons should be free