Briefing paper : assessing the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 as model menstruation legislation
Abstract
This briefing paper discusses how to include historical perspectives to assess the potential success for current and future menstruation legislation. The case of Scotland provides an instructive example of law-making about free period products and period poverty. While commercial products are perceived as a solution, historical research suggests that cultural attitudes, lingering stigma, and regional differences affect opportunities for passing laws. To predict the likelihood that proposed menstrual product legislation might be adopted in other locations, historical factors related to attitudes about menstruation, including stigma, must be considered and understood to effect lasting change.
Citation
Bildhauer , B , Røstvik , C M & Vostral , S L 2022 , ' Briefing paper : assessing the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 as model menstruation legislation ' , Open Library of Humanities , vol. 8 , no. 2 , 9129 . https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.9129
Publication
Open Library of Humanities
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2056-6700Type
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.
Description
This paper is based on ‘Ending Period Poverty in Scotland: A Historical and International Perspective’ funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Arts and Humanities Research Network Award from 2020 to 2022 (grant number 64992), and administratively based at the University of St Andrews with Principal Investigator Bettina Bildhauer and Co-Investigators Sharra Vostral and Camilla Mørk Røstvik.Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.