Why a Period Action Day

by Aimee Robertson-West, Vice President Development and Communications

Women4Change joined collective voices of Hoosier girls and women in Indiana at Period Action Day at the Statehouse is Wednesday, January 10th, 2024.

We joined a statehouse full of friends, including MAD Voters Indiana, to "stop taxation on menstruation" and Women 4 Change Program Manager, Kennedy Phillips, testified.

Why is there a Period Action Day? Why pick this battle again in 2024?
The State of Indiana profits $5.6 million annually from Hoosier girls' and women's menstrual cycles.

What are Hoosier girls and women getting in return?
60-75% gender wage inequality, (respectively, after adding intersectional and demographic layers), increasing maternal mortality rates, and the loss of our reproductive rights in 2023.

The bill is back up in 2024, reminding our legislature to enforce its current tax code and stop taxing menstrual products as optional, luxury items and define them as the medically necessary devices they are.

Girls and women cannot participate in their lives and society without menstrual discharge collection devices.

Will this be the year we finally see an end to Indiana's period tax?

Here's a throwback to W4C's Public Policy Committee's Shruti Rana's 2022 piece: "It's Time to End the Discriminatory Tax in Indiana.”

In the absence of economic and wage parity, a grossly disproportional lack of female representation (17% among Indiana’s decision-making bodies), and the loss of female reproductive autonomy, eliminating Indiana’s highly profitable period tax is one small way to help restore the dignity of girls and women living in Indiana.