\n<\/p>\n
Growing up in Rawalpindi, a city adjacent to Pakistan\u2019s capital Islamabad, Mahnoor Omer remembers the shame and anxiety she felt in school when she had periods. Going to the toilet with a sanitary pad was an act of stealth, like trying to cover up a crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to hide my pad up my sleeve like I was taking narcotics to the bathroom,\u201d says Omer, who comes from a middle-class family \u2013 her father a businessman and her mother a homemaker. \u201cIf someone talked about it, teachers would put you down.\u201d A classmate once told her that her mother considered pads \u201ca waste of money\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when it hit me,\u201d says Omer. \u201cIf middle-class families think this way, imagine how out of reach these products are for others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now 25, Omer has gone from cautious schoolgirl to national centrestage in a battle that could reshape menstrual hygiene in Pakistan, a country where critics say economics is compounding social stigma to punish women \u2013 simply for being women.<\/p>\n
In September, Omer, a lawyer, petitioned the Lahore High Court, challenging what she and many others say is effectively a \u201cperiod tax\u201d imposed by Pakistan on its more than 100 million women.<\/p>\n
Pakistani governments have, under the Sales Tax Act of 1990, long charged an 18 percent sales tax on locally manufactured sanitary pads and a customs tax of 25 percent on imported ones, as well as on raw materials needed to make them. Add on other local taxes, and UNICEF Pakistan says that these pads are often effectively taxed at about 40 percent.<\/p>\n
Omer\u2019s petition argues that these taxes \u2013 which specifically affect women \u2013 are discriminatory, and violate a series of constitutional provisions that guarantee equality and dignity, elimination of exploitation and the promotion of social justice.<\/p>\n
In a country where menstruation is already a taboo subject in most families, Omer and other lawyers and activists supporting the petition say that the taxes make it even harder for most Pakistani women to access sanitary products. A standard pack of commercially branded sanitary pads in Pakistan currently costs about 450 rupees ($1.60) for 10 pieces. In a country with a per capita income of $120 a month, that\u2019s the cost of a meal of rotis and dal for a low-income family of four. Cut the cost by 40 percent \u2013 the taxes \u2013 and the calculations become less loaded against sanitary pads.<\/p>\n
At the moment, only 12 percent of Pakistani women use commercially produced sanitary pads, according to a 2024 study by UNICEF and the WaterAid nonprofit. The rest improvise using cloth or other materials, and often do not even have access to clean water to wash themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this petition goes forward, it\u2019s going to make pads affordable,\u201d says Hira Amjad, the founder and executive director of Dastak Foundation, a Pakistani nonprofit whose work is focused on promoting gender equality and combating violence against women.<\/p>\n
And that, say lawyers and activists, could serve as a spark for broader social change.<\/p>\n
The court docket describes the case as Mahnoor Omer against senior officials of the government of Pakistan. But that\u2019s not what it feels like to Omer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like women versus Pakistan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Activists of Mahwari Justice, a menstrual rights group, distributing period kits to women in Pakistan [Photo courtesy Mahwari Justice]<\/p>\n
Bushra Mahnoor, founder of Mahwari Justice, a Pakistani student-led organisation whose name translates to \u201cmenstrual justice\u201d, realised early just how much of a struggle it could be to access sanitary pads.<\/p>\n
Mahnoor \u2013 no relation to Omer \u2013 grew up in Attock, a city in the northwestern part of Pakistan\u2019s Punjab province, with four sisters. \u201cEvery month, I had to check if there were enough pads. If my period came when one of my sisters had hers too,\u201d finding a pad was a challenge, she says.<\/p>\n
The struggle continued in school, where, as was the case with Omer, periods were associated with shame. A teacher once made one of her classmates stand for two entire lectures because her white uniform was stained. \u201cThat was dehumanising,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Mahnoor was 10 when she had her first period. \u201cI didn\u2019t know how to use a pad. I stuck it upside down; the sticky side touched my skin. It was painful. No one tells you how to manage it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says that shame was never hers alone, but it\u2019s part of a silence which starts at home and accompanies girls into adulthood. A study on menstrual health in Pakistan shows that eight out of 10 girls feel embarrassed or uncomfortable when talking about periods, and two out of three girls report never having received information about menstruation before it began. The findings, published in the Frontiers in Public Health journal in 2023, link this silence to poor hygiene, social exclusion and missed school days.<\/p>\n
In 2022, when floods devastated Pakistan, Mahnoor began Mahwari Justice to ensure that relief camps did not overlook the menstrual needs of women. \u201cWe began distributing pads and later realised there\u2019s so much more to be done,\u201d she says. Her organisation has distributed more than 100,000 period kits \u2013 each containing pads, soap, underwear, detergent and painkillers \u2013 and created rap songs and comics to normalise conversations about menstruation. \u201cWhen you say the word \u2018mahwari\u2019 out loud, you\u2019re teaching people it\u2019s not shameful,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s just life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The same floods also influenced Amjad, the Dastak Foundation founder, though her nonprofit has been around for a decade now. Its work now also includes distributing period kits during natural disasters.<\/p>\n
But the social stigma associated with menstruation is also closely tied to economics in the ways in which its impact plays out for Pakistani women, suggests Amjad.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn most households, it\u2019s the men who make financial decisions,\u201d she says. \u201cEven if the woman is bringing the money, she\u2019s giving it to the man, and he is deciding where that money needs to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
And if the cost of women\u2019s health feels too high, that\u2019s often compromised. \u201c[With] the inflated prices due to the tax, there is no conversation in many houses about whether we should buy pads,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s an expense they cannot afford organically.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the 2023 study in the Frontiers in Public Health, over half of Pakistani women are not able to afford sanitary pads.<\/p>\n
If the taxes are removed, and menstrual hygiene becomes more affordable, the benefits will extend beyond health, says Amjad.<\/p>\n
School attendance rates for girls could improve, she said. Currently, more than half of Pakistan\u2019s girls in the five to 16 age group are not in school, according to the United Nations. \u201cWe will have stress-free women. We will have happier and healthier women.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawyer Ahsan Jehangir Khan, the co-petitioner with Mahnoor Omer, in the case demanding an end to the \u2018period tax\u2019 [Photo courtesy of Ahsan Jehangir Khan]<\/p>\n
Omer says her interest in women\u2019s and minority rights began early. \u201cWhat inspired me was just seeing the blatant mistreatment every day,\u201d she says. \u201cThe economic, physical, and verbal exploitation that women face, whether it\u2019s on the streets, in the media, or inside homes, never sat right with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
She credits her mother for making her grow up to be an empathetic and understanding person.<\/p>\n
After completing school, she worked as a gender and criminal justice consultant at Crossroads Consultants, a Pakistan-based firm that collaborates with NGOs and development partners on gender and criminal justice reform. At the age of 19, she also volunteered at Aurat March, an annual women\u2019s rights movement and protest held across Pakistan on International Women\u2019s Day \u2013 it\u2019s a commitment she has kept up since then.<\/p>\n
Her first step into activism came at 16, when she and her friends started putting together \u201cdignity kits\u201d, small care packages for women in low-income neighbourhoods of Islamabad. \u201cWe would raise funds with bake sales or use our own money,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n
The money she was able to raise enabled her to distribute about 300 dignity kits that she and her friends made themselves. They each contained pads, underwear, pain medication and wipes. But she wanted to do more.<\/p>\n
She got a chance when she started working at the Supreme Court in early 2025, first as a law clerk. She\u2019s currently pursuing postgraduate studies in gender, peace and security at the London School of Economics and says that she will go back to Pakistan to resume her practice after she graduates.<\/p>\n
She became friends with fellow lawyer Ahsan Jehangir Khan, who specialises in taxation and constitutional law. The plan to challenge the \u201cperiod tax\u201d emerged from their conversations.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe pushed me to file this petition and try to get justice instead of just sitting around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khan, who is a co-petitioner in the case, says that fighting the taxes is about more than accessibility and affordability of sanitary pads \u2013 it\u2019s about justice. \u201cIt\u2019s a tax on a biological function,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Tax policies in Pakistan, he says, are written by \u201ca privileged elite, mostly men who have never had to think about what this tax means for ordinary women\u201d. The constitution, he adds, \u201cis very clear that you cannot have anything discriminatory against any gender whatsoever\u201d.<\/p>\n
To Amjad, the Dastak Foundation founder, the fight for menstrual hygiene is closely tied to her other passion \u2013 the struggle against climate change. The extreme weather-related crisis, such as floods, that Pakistan has faced in recent times, she says, hit women particularly hard.<\/p>\n
She remembers the trauma many women she worked with after the 2022 floods described to her. \u201cImagine that you are living in a tent and you have mahwari [menstruation] for the first time,\u201d she says. \u201cYou are not mentally prepared for it. You are running for your life. You don\u2019t have access to safety or security. That trauma is a trauma for life.\u201d<\/p>\n
As temperatures rise on average, women will need to change sanitary pads more frequently during their periods \u2013 and a lack of adequate access will prove an even bigger problem, Amjad warns. She supports the withdrawal of taxes on sanitary pads \u2013 but only those made from cotton, not plastic ones that \u201ctake thousands of years to decompose\u201d.<\/p>\n
Amjad is also campaigning for paid menstruation leave. \u201cI have come across women who were fired because they had pain during periods and couldn\u2019t work,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen you are menstruating, one part of your brain is on menstruation. You can\u2019t really focus properly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, opponents of the taxes are hoping that Omer\u2019s petition will pressure the Pakistani government to follow other nations such as India, Nepal and the United Kingdom that have abolished their period taxes.<\/p>\n
Taking on that mantle against the government\u2019s policies didn\u2019t come easily to Omer. Her parents, she says, were nervous at first about their daughter going to court against the government. \u201cThey said it\u2019s never a good idea to take on the state,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Now, they\u2019re proud of her, she says. \u201cThey understand why this matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
To her, the case is not just a legal fight. \u201cWhen I think of this case, the picture that comes to mind \u2026 It\u2019s not a courtroom, it\u2019s a feeling of justice,\u201d she says. \u201cIt makes me feel a sense of pride to be able to do this and take this step without fear.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Growing up in Rawalpindi, a city adjacent to Pakistan\u2019s capital Islamabad, Mahnoor Omer remembers the shame and anxiety she felt in school when she had periods. Going to the toilet with a sanitary pad was an act of stealth, like trying to cover up a crime. \u201cI used to hide my pad up my sleeve<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[17772,160,5337,4170,17773,17774,2757,13339],"class_list":{"0":"post-30216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-25yearold","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-equity","11":"tag-gender","12":"tag-mahnoor","13":"tag-omer","14":"tag-pakistan","15":"tag-periods"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}