Unlike Scotland, women’s hygiene products are not free of charge in Latvia. The initiative to provide free hygiene products for girls and women in educational institutions was submitted to a Saeima committee at the end of May. In Scotland, however, this practice has been in play for two years now, LSM reports.
The media reports that Scotland is the first country in the world that has adopted the practice of providing women’s hygiene products free of charge in public places.
Hygiene items – tampons, panty liners, etc. – are available in shops and pharmacies, but few in Scotland buy them.
Hygiene items are issued to girls in education institutions free of charge. This practice has been in place in Scotland since 2018. Three years later Scottish government made the decision to make hygiene products freely available to all people that need them.
The purpose of this decision is to provide hygiene items to persons whose families cannot afford hygiene items.
Hygiene items are available not only in education institutions, but also libraries, active leisure centres, museums and other locations. Mostly those are product stands – residents can pick whichever items they need from them.
Similarly to that, an initiative has been submitted to the Latvian Saeima to first ensure availability of free hygiene items in education institutions.
The author of this initiative, Inese Ielīte told the Saeima Mandates, Ethics and Submissions Committee that the goal is to promote access to education and promote the quality of the learning process for girls at all stages of education. According to her, these changes will provide all women and girls in Latvia equal opportunities and reduce biological-based gender inequality.
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