Menstrual Equity Archives - Read. Think. Act.

Crossover Legislative Update – VA. General Assembly

(Feb. 12, 2018) Catherine Read speaks with several advocates to look at where their legislation is headed during the 2018 VA General Assembly. February 14 marked “crossover”, which was the halfway point of the General Assembly session. The bills that made their way through the House will “crossover” to the Senate, and the bills in the Senate will make their way to the House for debate and discussion. Additionally, they will take up the Governor’s Budget starting on Monday February 19^th.

SALT

Catherine’s first guest was John Horejsi, director of SALT (Social Action Linking Together ), a network of persons in Virginia embracing the principle that “The justice of a society can be measured by how the most vulnerable members of society are faring and being treated”. Their legislative agenda is very robust, here is a breakdown of how their bills are faring this year:

HB 797: Electronic Visitation for Correctional Facilities

This bill would not allow the prisons to limit in-person visitation, if the facility also offers video visitation as an option. Studies have shown a lower rate of recidivism and higher success rates upon re-entry to society when they have the opportunity to see their loved ones in person.

SB 593: Health Insurance Coverage for Autism Spectrum Disorder

This bill would require Insurance companies to provide medical insurance coverage for children ages 10-18. Currently they are only required to cover children ages 2-6 years old. Passed the Senate and referred to Appropriations.

SB 27: TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) Scholarship Pilot Program:

A temporary 2 year pilot program would establish a scholarship fund for students in poverty of up to $4000 per student, should the student meet the requirements. This bill passed the Senate and was referred to House Appropriations. Unfortunately, it’s companion bill in the House (HB 285) was killed, so the fate of this bill does not look promising.
HB 50: School Lunch Shaming

Requires local school boards to develop policies of how to deal with students whose lunch accounts are overdue. They would be required to communicate with parents, instead of shaming the children by singling them if their account it overdue. It would prohibit the school board from having the children perform chores in order to get food. It would also not allow the school to put a sticker or hand stamp on a child whose account is overdue. Passed the House 100-0.

HB 1333: Kinship/Guardianship

This bill would give the needed financial support to Grandparents or other extended family who are raising children who cannot live with their parents. The bill sets forth eligibility criteria, payment allowances to kinship guardians, and requirements for kinship guardianship assistance programs. The bill passed the House and was send onto the Committee for Rehabilitation and Social Services in the Senate.

SB 181: Drivers License, Suspension for non-payment of fines

This bill would repeal the requirement that a driver’s license of anyone convicted of any violation of the law who fails or refuses to immediately pay the fine or cost be suspended. This bill disproportionately affected those in the lowest income bracket. If someone loses their license and cannot get to work, then they cannot ever afford to pay their fines. This bill has passed the Senate and has been referred to House Appropriations.

BRAWS

Catherine’s second guest was Holly Seibold, Founder of BRAWS (Bringing Resources and Aid to Women’s Shelters ). Their mission is to bring dignity and empowerment to women and girls living in shelters by providing them with new, personally fitted undergarments and menstrual supplies. Holly’s group has several initiatives that they were working on this year.

HB 83: Feminine Hygiene Products – No Cost to Female Prisoners or Inmates

Directs the State Board of Corrections to implement a standard to ensure that all women prisoners have access to feminine hygiene products at no charge. This bill passed the House 100-0.

HB 24: Make Feminine Hygiene Products Exempt from Sales Tax

This bill would have made feminine hygiene products exempt from sales tax. A sister bill (HB 25) was put in to make these products exempt from tax during the sales tax holiday each August for back to school shopping. Both of these bills died in the House this year.

FEA

Catherine’s final guest for this week’s show was Kevin Hickerson from the FEA (Fairfax Education Association) His organization advocates to make Fairfax County Schools the best school system possible. They are trying to work with the General Assembly to assist with the teacher shortage, without reducing standards of quality. Kevin spoke about one of their largest initatives, which would allow local schools to increase recess time without having to increase overall instruction time (HB 1419). He also noted his excitement about working with Atif Qarni, the new Secretary of Education under Gov. Ralph Northam. Hickerson noted that having a former classroom teacher at the top of the hierarchy will be a great asset to the Commonwealth.

HB 1419 – Public Schools Instructional Time

This bill would give local school the ability to expand recess without having to increase instructional time. Studies have shown that if students are given more time for unstructured play and the ability to move around, that they have more success in the classroom and are better able to focus on their learning. This bill has passed the House and is moving on the Education and Health Committee in the Senate.

by Rachel Simon

Virginia Menstrual Equity – Holly Seibold of BRAWS

(Jan. 3, 2018) Catherine Read interviews Holly Siebold, founder of Bringing Resources and Aid to Women’s Shelters (BRAWS), and Shaheen Khurama, head of the BRAWS Advocacy Committee. They are a non-partisan coalition, composed of groups and individuals with interest in menstrual equity. They believe that access to safe menstrual products is a matter of human dignity and public health.

The advocacy committee, notes Khurama, has a mission to support public policy initiatives that have three main objectives. First, they want to expand access to menstrual products in schools, women’s shelters and correctional facilities. Second, they aim to make menstrual products more affordable by making them tax-free or allowing the products to be included in Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) Benefits, and by adding eligibility of these items for refundable tax credits. Lastly, they aim to make the products safer by requiring manufacturers to list the materials used in the products.

Author Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, in her book Periods Gone Public, coined the term “menstrual equity”, where she talks about the stigma of openly talking about menstrual cycles. She also notes that women and girls do not have equal opportunities for success in cultures throughout the world because of how they are treated or isolated during their menstrual cycles. This book caught on with female grassroots activists in the US. Although women don’t face many of the obvious problems that occur in other world cultures, female advocates did find parallels and wanted to start a grass roots movement to change the culture around menstrual cycles.

In an effort to educate girls about this issue, Seibold shares that BRAWS has started a teen leadership council, where girls from Elementary, Middle and High Schools come together and learn how to talk openly about periods. They are then ambassadors, as they return to their home schools and hold conversations about periods with their peers. BRAWS aims to educate the next generation and take away the stigma about periods, using proper terminology, as well as having free products available in bathrooms and clinics at schools. BRAWS has heard from girls who have had to leave school because they get their period and don’t have access to products to manage their menstruation. This is something that can and should be addressed.

In the upcoming Virginia Legislative session, there are three bills being introduced to address the goals of BRAWS. Del. Kaye Kory is introducing HB 83, which would require correctional facilities to provide feminine hygiene products free of charge to inmates. ( update: since the interview this bill has passed through both the House and the Senate and is awaiting signature from the Governor).

Del. Jennifer Boysko introduced two other bills designed to provide tax-free purchases of sanitary products, HB 24 and the complementary bill HB 25. HB 24 would make them permanently tax-free, and HB 25 would make products tax-free during the back to school tax-free holiday (update: both of these bills failed to make it out of the House).

The Virginia Menstrual Equity Coalition has brought together women’s advocacy groups from around the Commonwealth. These are not partisan groups, they are simply women from all across the state who want to advance the agenda of de-stigmatization of menstrual cycles and increased access to feminine hygiene products. BRAWS encourages women to contact their legislators (state and federal) to help advance their goals to make these products safer and more affordable. The coalition is thrilled to have the support of Gov. Ralph Northam, and hopes that with his medical background he can help raise the profile of these issues. On the Federal level, Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) has legislation moving through Capitol Hill to require ingredient labeling for feminine hygiene products. You can follow the progress of all of this legislation on the BRAWS website and on the Facebook page of the Virginia Menstrual Equity Coalition.

by Catherine Read

Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity

(Nov 2017) “Tampons and sanitary towels . . . have always been considered a luxury. That isn’t by accident, that’s by design of an unequal society, in which the concerns of women are not treated as equally as the concerns of men.” – Stella Creasy, Member of British Parliament

I was fortunate to hear author Jennifer Weiss-Wolf talk about her book and her advocacy at Bards Alley in Vienna, VA, on Nov. 28th. The next day I was on a panel of women and girls giving a briefing on menstrual equity issues on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, to legislative staff members in the offices of Senator Tim Kaine, Senator Cory Booker and Congressman Gerry Connolly. Rep. Grace Meng made opening remarks and addressed the strides New York City has made in putting these sanitary hygiene products in public schools, homeless shelters and prisons free of charge. The work of Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland of the New York City Council was instrumental in passing a bill in June of 2016 that was the first of its kind in the country.

Two young women on the panel, Ashley (24) and Jennifer (22) talked about their lack of access to needed menstrual supplies when they were incarcerated in jail. (They are both in a Virginia based re-entry program for formerly incarcerated women, Friends of Guest House.) They had to ask guards for pads, and it was up to the guards as to who got how many and when they received them. Requests were handled at the guards’ discretion and at their convenience. Ashley and Jennifer recreated for the hearing room a demonstration of how they made “prison tampons” out of substandard pads because they were more effective than the cheap flimsy pads. Being caught with a “prison tampon” was considered having contraband for which the prisoner could be charged.

Weiss-Wolf talks about her own dawning awareness of how many women in this country and around the world are impacted by the lack of access to the basic hygiene products that menstruation management requires. It affects women’s ability to get an education, to work, and to fully engage in productive daily activities. Factors like poverty, homelessness and incarceration leave many women and girls without access to products that are as necessary as toilet paper and soap – which are mandated by law to be in public restrooms.

The author talks about 2016 as “The Year of the Period.” From her own New Year’s Day thunderbolt to the Women’s March on January 21, 2017, to the trips she made to other parts of the world to research what was being done to address the issue of meeting women’s basic needs so we can fully function in society every day of the year.

Menstrual Equity is on the agenda of cities and states around the country, as well as in countries around the world with populations of women and girls living in poverty. There has been some innovation in place like India around creating small businesses that manufacture pads the poor women can afford. It also creates jobs for them.

In this country, there is a movement to roll back “The Tampon Tax” that places another financial burden on top of the expense of buying these products every month Since only people who menstruate use these products, only those people are paying the tax. The book also addresses the fact that transgender men and gender non-conforming individuals also menstruate. We need to move away from the term “feminine hygiene products” and call them menstrual hygiene products. This is less about a gender binary than acknowledging it as an issue of civil rights and basic human rights.

Weiss-Wolf also addresses the need to have better testing and full labeling on what is in the tampons women are using. Potentially toxic chemicals or artificial fibers need to be tested and consumer informed. She also points out that there is an environmental impact to providing more disposable products to more women around the world. Even bio-degradable products will take longer to breakdown than the lifespan of the people who have used them. Greater innovation needs to take place around how development menstrual management products that don’t have an adverse impact on the planet.

Locally here in Northern Virginia, Holly Seibold has founded BRAWS: Bringing Resources to Aid Women’s Shelters. This organization does product drives and distributes products to shelters and schools around the DC Metro area. They are also engaged in issue advocacy around Menstrual Equity. Delegate Jennifer Boysko is sponsoring two bills in Virginia’s 2018 legislative session, HB24 and HB25, that will address the elimination of “The Tampon Tax.”

I highly recommend this book as one everyone should read – men, women and children. We need to remove the stigma around discussing periods. Men and boys should understand this very natural and normal bodily function and should support menstruating individuals by advocating for greater access to menstrual hygiene products for those who need them. It is past time for our culture and our society to normalize that people have periods – every month – for most of their lives. I urge being informed and being an advocate on this issue.