In recent years, the activity on periods has always made the global headlines, targeting taboos, digging at public policy, and promoting companies to create new products (including women, transgender, non-binary people).
However, there is a growing concern about the corporate influence on the period resources. Menstruation in the last 100 years has become one of the most profitable markets producing various menstrual products.
The industry is aware that any menstruating gender cannot avoid menstrual hygiene products at any cost. Still, there is a luxury tax that has to be paid on the purchase of monthly hygiene products.
Some countries such as India, the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK have taken a step to shift the focus on the right of equal access to menstrual products and education along with voicing out on removing the “tampon tax” is becoming the part of the talk.
History Of Menstrual Products
Before the prime time of 1985, the word “period” was never mentioned on television in western countries. Today, period industry is a multi-million dollar industry.
Throughout the 1800s, predictability, homemade menstrual clothes of flannel, or woven fabric were a part of life. While companies marketed products door to door, the first commercial products became mainstream for audiences in the 1890s. At the same time, silk and elastic belt to which a pad is attached were introduced.
In 1921, Kotex became the first brand to successfully set their foot in the market by introducing the first cellulose sanitary pads. The invention was beneficial for the women contributing to World War I.
Creative and modified products continued to evolve in all eras with the first beltless pads introduced in 1972. They inspired variations for heavy flow, and light flow with a shift to new maxi pads and pads with wings in the 1980s. Tampons, too, continued to increase in popularity at the same time.
Throughout history, it has been interpreted that advancements in menstrual products and technology have a significant impact on health and personal and professional freedom of all menstruating gender.
Menstrual Industry, Capitalism And The Other Side
The current trend in the industry is “menstrual capitalism“. The marketing and selling of menstrual hygiene products seem to be using tactics by providing a feminist message to create support for commercial enterprises seeking profit from women’s bodies.
Evolution in new menstrual products such as tampons, pads, cups, period pants, vitamins, hormones, food, and apps to track the cycle is part of alluring the customers. Entrepreneurs around the globe are utilizing the opportunity and shaking the market.
With the increase in getting hands-on physiology of the body, podcasts, and depiction of menstruation, the products presented to target issues other than the collecting blood; these include following different skincare routines according to your menstrual cycle and seed cycling claiming to balance the hormones.
Interestingly, sanitary napkins and tampons did not emerge as the ‘saviour’ as they are often depicted in various advertisements. There is also a standing question on the role of profit-making companies through sanitary pads and other products in the de-stigmatization of menstrual taboos and stigma.
For example, the advertisements of all sanitary products neither display red blood nor talk about menstrual health. Instead, it only focuses on preventing leakage and making women free and confident. Corporations portray menstrual products as the only alternative for leakage-free periods with labelling all other traditional methods as unhealthy. With establishing menstrual blood as dirty, the manufacturers have commodified menstruation in India.
I think not only in India, but across the world, women’s menstrual cycles are dominated by the capitalist patriarchal structures that govern a country’s economy. The logic of placing capitalism above people is creating a never-ending demand for new markets.
This hunger for profit makes the territory of the body a commodity designed to be bought and thrown away every month alongside a negative view of the menstrual cycle. Patriarchy demands that the reality of periods has to be hidden and the humiliation around periods for disposable menstrual product companies to continue to make a profit.
In many parts of the countries, some corporations have been donating products to women in developing areas for many years, often in collaboration with policymakers. This is being done to combat the assumption of “backward thinking” of people, especially in rural areas where cloth pads and natural materials are used rather than disposable sanitary pads. Paradoxically, people in urban areas are in favour of shifting to the reusable sanitary products.
Consumers are demanding answers to how to prevent burdening the environment while being sustainable and safe with their menstrual products. It remains a pressing issue. On the one hand, industrial and policymakers’ interest lies in menstruation being recognized as necessary. The other side of the recognition can only come within the framework of “menstrual capitalism” and, thus, seems to benefit those who mostly sell menstrual products.