Jarvis: Finally, women rank higher than chocolate chips and cocktail cherries.

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Ah!

Every woman knows panic.

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Your period starts unexpectedly. You don’t have tampons or sanitary pads.

Amid the stream of big projects like Celestial Beacon, Festival Plaza, and Distillery District, the city council has made a small but significant decision: to provide free menstrual products in public restrooms.

I was in a bathroom at the Hamilton Library this fall. There, next to the sink, next to the soap and paper towels, was a container of tampons. It was there if you need them, like toilet paper, soap, and paper towels.

And half the population needs them.

Windsor, thanks to teenage activist Jada Malott and her father, Mike, will begin offering the products in six buildings over a year: the WFCU Center, Water World, Windsor International Aquatics and Training Center, Capri Pizza Recreation Complex and the buildings at 350 and 400 Town Hall Square.

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At the end of the year, the city will assess whether it should offer the products in all of its public restrooms, which, of course, it should.

The pilot test is estimated to cost $ 19,000, $ 10,000 to install the dispensers and receptacles and $ 9,000 for the products.

It would cost $ 39,000 to install dispensers and receptacles in all public restrooms and $ 37,000 to keep dispensers stocked.

In a city with a combined capital and operating budget of roughly $ 1 billion, that’s not much.

But it says a lot.

It’s about recognizing everyone’s basic needs. You don’t have to fumble for a quarter for toilet paper in a lockable dispenser that may or may not have toilet paper and may or may not work. Women shouldn’t have to do that with tampons and pads, either.

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And here is something that is especially considered. The city will also provide menstrual products in men’s restrooms “to meet the menstrual needs of transgender people and other non-binary people, a group that is often overlooked in the movement to make tampons, sanitary pads and other items. hygiene standards are available to all who need them. ” ”Stated the staff report to the council.

Again, it’s about recognizing everyone’s basic needs.

This decision has to do with many basic things: health, economy, opportunities, dignity.

Fifty-five percent of women in Canada have missed school or work or rejected social activities due to menstruation, according to a 2018 study for Plan Canada, the nonprofit aid organization that promotes justice. Social. Seventy-four percent have had a missed period at school or work. 86% were caught off guard when it started.

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“Periods are a barrier to women’s participation in Canada,” the report states.

Twenty-three percent of women and 33 percent under the age of 25 have difficulty paying for menstrual products.

Sixty-three percent have felt they had to hide the fact that they were taking tampons and pads to the bathroom at school or at work.

Fifty-seven percent reported having people accuse them of having PMS.

So the council’s decision also breaks the taboo of talking about menstruation. Menstruation is a nuisance. But it’s not dirty and it’s not embarrassing. It is just a normal bodily function. Period.

It took a long time not to get very far on this issue.

The women fought for 24 years, until 2015, to get the federal government to exempt menstruation products from the GST.

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Meanwhile, incontinence pads were not taxed. I guess if men filter that’s a problem.

Chocolate chips, cocktail cherries, and cake decorations were also not taxed. They were deemed essential under the Canadian Excise Act. But not menstrual products. That tells you something about how our politicians, mostly men, classified women’s issues.

But now, more and more, municipalities and schools are providing free tampons in their public toilets. London started providing them in 2019. The two main school boards here voted to provide them this year. The public board had been providing them, thanks to the Windsor Goodfellows. But the students had to ask for them. Some just went home.

Then last month, Ontario Minister of Education Stephen Lecce announced that the province, in partnership with Shoppers Drug Mart, will distribute six million free menstrual products to school boards each year for the next three years. Ontario is the fourth province to offer the products for free to students who need them.

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“It has become very clear,” Lecce declared, “that menstrual products are a necessity, not a luxury.”

Let a man say so.

The Liberals’ electoral platform in September included providing free menstrual products in federally regulated workplaces and a $ 25 million Menstrual Equity Fund to provide them to vulnerable women through shelters and community groups.

Scotland became the first country in the world in 2020 to unanimously approve free menstrual products for “anyone who needs them.”

Finally, women rank higher than chocolate chips and cocktail cherries.

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