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Introduction : The Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 in the context of menstrual politics and history

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Date
19/05/2022
Author
Bildhauer, Bettina M
Rostvik, Camilla Mork
Vostral, Sharra L
Funder
The Royal Society of Edinburgh
Grant ID
64992
Keywords
Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021
Menstruation
Period poverty
Scottish politics history of gender,
Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 menstruation
Scottish politics
History of gender
Menstrual products
Menstrual hygiene
HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
T-NDAS
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Abstract
In January 2021, Scotland became the first country in the world to make universal access to free period products a legal right, an initiative which attracted extraordinary international attention. This introduction outlines what is indeed new and ground-breaking about this law from the perspective of the history of menstruation, and what merely continues traditional and widespread conceptions, policies and practices surrounding menstruation. On the basis of an analysis of the parliamentary debates of the Act, we show that it gained broad political support by satisfying a combination of ten different political agendas: (1) promoting gender equality for women, while also (2) acknowledging broader gender diversity; (3) taking practical steps to alleviate one high-profile aspect of poverty at a relatively low overall cost to the state, while also (4) stimulating the production of menstrual products; (5) tackling menstrual stigma; (6) improving access to education; (7) working with grassroots campaigners; (8) improving public health; and (9) accommodating sustainability concerns; as well as (10) the desire to pass world-leading legislation in itself. In each case, we explore the extent to which the political aim is typical of, or departs from, wider trajectories in the history and politics of menstruation, and, where pertinent, trajectories in Scottish political history. The ten agendas in their international context provide kaleidoscopic insight into the current state of menstrual politics and history in Scotland and beyond. This introduction also situates this Special Collection as a whole in relation to the field of Critical Menstruation Studies and provides background information about the legislative process and key terminology in Scottish politics and in the history of menstruation.
Citation
Bildhauer , B M , Rostvik , C M & Vostral , S L 2022 , ' Introduction : The Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 in the context of menstrual politics and history ' , Open Library of Humanities , vol. 8 , no. 1 . https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.8159
Publication
Open Library of Humanities
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.8159
ISSN
2056-6700
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
The research for this Special Collection volume was funded by a Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Arts and Humanities Research Network Award (64992).
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/25428

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