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 as a “world first”. This introduction outlines from the perspective of the history of menstruation what is indeed new and ground-breaking about this law, and what merely continues traditional and widespread conceptions, policies and practices surrounding menstruation. On the basis of on analysis the parliamentary debates of the Act, we show that it gained broad political support by satisfying a combination of ten different political agendas: promoting gender equality for women while acknowledging broader gender diversity, practically alleviating one high-profile aspect of poverty at a relatively low overall cost to the state, tackling menstrual stigma, improving access to education, working with grassroots campaigners, improving public health, and accommodating sustainability concerns, as well as the desire to pass world-leading legislation in itself. We in each case show to what extent the particular political aim is typical of, or else departs from, recent 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 a 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.
The Free Provisions Act is the first national legislation of its kind to provide menstrual products at no cost to women and menstruators throughout Scotland. Yet, this did not happen by accident, and follows historical trends in technoscientific progress and social change. This essay tracks the relationship of women’s acceptance of menstrual technologies with prevailing social and political vectors in United States and Scotland. There are four significant historical moments marking technological change and adoption: the late-Victorian period and the first menstrual product commodities; the modern period marked by World War I through the 1930s that included broadly produced and advertised sanitary napkins; World War II to the mid-twentieth century and the acceptance of tampons; and the 1970s women’s rights movement including the emerging transition to menstrual cups. Within each are differing pressures exerted by both world events and internal societal changes that encourage women to adopt new products. But at moments when wage labor benefits the state, some institutions, heath providers, and educators exert pressure to disregard forms of menstrual stigma and use menstrual products instead. These shifts and movements, along with the prevailing visual culture of advertising and product branding, encompass the menstrualscape. These historical moments and the contemporary menstrualscape signal a current transition in the making, with the promotion of menstrual cups as an environmentally sustainable way to manage menstruation. This aligns with the Free Provisions Act, in which state-sponsored provision of menstrual products serve the needs of the economy, the environment, and concern for gender equity.
I n 1980, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States implicated Rely tampons, produced by Procter & Gamble, as the single tampon most contributing to the onset of toxic shock syndrome. Pressured by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and threatened with a recall, the company withdrew unpurchased boxes from store shelves. The urgency was reinforced through television, radio and newspaper advertisements that instructed women to stop using Rely and seek refunds. 1 The CDC urged all women to minimize use and avoid, if possible, superabsorbent tampons because this category had the greatest association with toxic shock syndrome. However, without accurate and standardized labelling about absorption, women could not easily follow this recommendation.
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