Sweden launches menstruation campaign
The Swedish Gender Equality Agency has provided around 50,000 euros for a campaign aimed at raising awareness of the subject of menstruation at the workplace. The campaign is to include presentations at companies and calls for sanitary pads and tampons to be made available at places of work. Some commentators say it's high time the subject was discussed, others question the need for such a campaign.
We need to talk about menstruation
Journalist Otto Ekevi sees the campaign as entirely justified on SVT Opinion:
“All members of society should have access to sanitary pads and tampons to be able to continue their work. This should be a top priority. ... The fact that female lead writers are getting upset about this proposal is noteworthy. Most of them are not against medical care or asphalted roads being financed through taxes, so they shouldn't be opposed to working women have access to menstruation hygiene articles so they can get through their working day more or less tolerably. That this should be a matter for debate in 2018 is absurd.”
A feminist impasse
The campaign has nothing to do with feminism, Ann-Charlotte Marteus writes in Expressen:
“Of course it's entirely reasonable for the topic of menstruation to be de-dramatised and for us to discuss it in ways that were unthinkable a few generations ago. ... But the fact that menstruation is not discussed on the job in Sweden as much as the Forum for Menstruation would like has little to do with the oppression of women. ... On the contrary, women have had their way to such an extent in Swedish society that one wonders: could the stubborn attempts to force lectures about menstruation on employees be an instrument of domination? What's more, on mature reflection I think that this focus on the female body is a feminist impasse.”