In Pakistan, 25-year-old lawyer Mahmoor Omer has filed a groundbreaking petition against her own government, arguing that menstrual products should be tax-free, because, as she puts it, “periods are not a choice.”
Omer is taking aim at the country’s 18 percent sales tax on sanitary pads and other menstrual items. While the law treats these products as “luxury goods,” she’s making a very different case: biology is not a luxury.
The legal petition, filed in Islamabad, is one of the first to directly challenge menstrual taxation in Pakistan, a country where menstruation is more often shrouded in stigma than brought to court. Omer’s constitutional argument leans on equality and accessibility: if items like razors and aftershave are tax-exempt, why are menstrual pads taxed?
Her case joins a growing global push to challenge “tampon taxes” everywhere from Kenya to the UK. But in Pakistan’s conservative legal and cultural climate, the courtroom is rarely where period poverty is addressed.
The Guardian quoted a fellow lawyer and friend of Omer’s who made the preliminary arguments in the case at court, says the high cost of menstrual products “aggravates the economic and social disadvantages already faced by women, amounting to indirect gender discrimination”.
Regardless of the verdict, Mahmoor Omer has already succeeded in one thing; making the courts talk about something they’ve historically ignored and yet is half the population’s monthly reality.
