George Osborne’s condescending solution to the tampon tax misses the point
In last week’s Autumn Statement to parliament, Chancellor George Osborne announced that the £15 million raised by the UK ‘luxury tax’ on sanitary products will go towards funding women’s charities.
On the surface, the benefit of this announcement felt inarguable. As a feminist and a passionate supporter of women’s rights, how could I oppose a £15 million investment in women’s health charities and support services? How could I oppose anything that would financially sustain excellent causes dealing with the domestic abuse such as The Eve Appeal, SafeLives, Women’s Aid and The Haven? Yet as a menstruating woman, burdened economically by a ConDem student loan, I refuse to see the chancellor’s logic in forcing women to fund their own support structures.
What the ‘tampon tax’ debacle really illustrates is not a chancellor, hands tied by bilateral EU laws, offering the best possible solution to benefit women. It illustrates a chancellor conflating two separate issues affecting women, and contemptibly refusing to acknowledge the deficit in funding for women’s services created by the government’s relentless gendered agenda of austerity.
Behind the self-satisfied jeering and backslapping of the Tory frontbenches and the gesture politics of the Autumn Statement 2015 is the real suffering of women unable to access the services whose funds have been slashed by this government. Women are being bled dry by the state when vital support services lose funding, when the budgets are cut for local government authorities, when 32 refuges for women have been closed down since 2010, and when up to 150 women a day are being turned away by full to capacity refuges.
Women live in a world where one in four will be the victims of sexual assault in their lifetimes. We live in a country in which two women are killed each week by a current or former partner. For many women, access to domestic violence services, refuges, counselling and care are the difference between life and death. Wednesday’s announcement on the tampon tax distracts conversation away from these issues and the severe underfunding of women’s services by the government, and seeks to erase the hand it has played in further threatening the lives and safety of women.
Not only does Osborne’s £15 million redirection of funds do very little to redress the truly devastating effects of government cuts on women, the continuance of the tampon tax threatens both our finances and our dignity. The average menstruating female will spend £18,000 in her lifetime on sanitary products. For some of society’s most vulnerable women, this economic imposition makes their use an impossibility.
As news broke that the tampon tax would not be cut, my Facebook feed filled with friends – women’s officers at my university – stating their intention to collect tampons to donate to local homeless shelters and food banks. This reflects a wider trend with campaigns such as The Homeless Period project, which collects donations of tampons and other sanitary products for homeless women. Essential help for vulnerable women has often come from the self-sustained, tireless work of women’s organisations and charities, as well as the kindness and donations of strangers. And yet much of this has sprung up where the government has refused to act to support women in their budgets.
As someone who always seeks to champion and aid women’s health and support charities, I donate to the Maya Centre which provides free long-term counselling and psychological assistance to some of the most vulnerable women in Islington, North London. But the survival of institutions like the Maya Centre – which aids female victims of domestic violence and sexual assault in the recovery and rebuilding of their lives – is dependent on a government commitment to a long-term economic strategy to protect and invest in these vital organisations. Osborne’s £15 million barely scratches the surface. Moreover, the economic subjugation of women through a continuance of taxing tampons to fund women’s charities highlights how the government is willing to shirk responsibility in not offering legitimate channels of funding to these life-saving services for women.
If I have to pay a tampon tax, of course I would rather that revenue went to helping vulnerable women. Yet as Labour MP Jess Phillips reportedly shouted as Osborne’s plans were announced, “You’re not paying it George, I am!” While all of us need to be active in supporting these causes, the ultimate responsibility to protect the lives and safety of women lies not with the tax-paying, tampon-buying female – but with the government. The blood is on the government’s hands as long as it refuses to offer properly structured and extensive funding for women’s support organisations, as long as services are closed and women are turned away from refuges due to lack of resources. They cut, we bleed.
Image from: http://cardiffstudentmedia.co.uk/gairrhydd/comment/blood-money-tampon-tax/