In a country where menstruation is still whispered about behind closed doors, a 25-year-old lawyer has decided to drag the conversation into open court. When Mahnoor Omer filed her petition before the Lahore High Court, she was not merely challenging a tax code. She was challenging the idea that a basic biological function can be treated as a luxury.
At the heart of her case is what activists call the “period tax.” In Pakistan, menstrual hygiene products are not classified as essential goods. Locally manufactured sanitary pads are subject to an 18% sales tax. Imported products and raw materials face customs duties that can climb to 25%, and when additional levies are included, the overall tax burden can approach 40% of the retail price. The result is simple: pads cost more than many women can comfortably afford.
In a country where millions live on tight monthly budgets, a pack of sanitary pads priced at several hundred rupees competes with food, transport and electricity bills. For low-income households, menstrual products can feel like an optional purchase — even though they are anything but optional. Omer argues that this classification is not just economically flawed but constitutionally unjust.
Her petition contends that taxing menstrual products violates constitutional guarantees of equality and dignity. Only women and girls menstruate. Only they bear this recurring cost. To treat pads like cosmetics or non-essential consumer goods, she argues, amounts to discrimination on the basis of sex. The state, she says, cannot proclaim equality while profiting from a biological necessity unique to half its population.
But Omer’s fight is not purely legalistic. It is rooted in lived experience. She has spoken publicly about growing up in Rawalpindi and absorbing, like many girls, the quiet shame that surrounds menstruation in Pakistan. Pads were hidden in black plastic bags. Periods were referred to in euphemisms. Questions were discouraged. That culture of silence, she says, makes it easier for policymakers to ignore the issue entirely.
Pakistan’s menstrual health statistics reflect that neglect. Surveys suggest that only a small percentage of women use commercially manufactured sanitary pads. Many rely on cloth or improvised materials, often reused without proper sanitation. Health professionals have long warned that such practices can increase the risk of infections and other complications. Period poverty — the inability to afford safe menstrual products — also contributes to girls missing school days each month, reinforcing educational gaps that already disadvantage women.
Omer’s petition asks the court to reclassify menstrual products as essential goods, placing them alongside items such as staple foods and certain medicines that are either tax-exempt or taxed at lower rates. The argument is deceptively simple: if milk is essential, so are pads. If the state recognises the necessity of basic nutrition, it must also recognise the necessity of menstrual hygiene.
The case has resonated beyond Lahore. Similar challenges have been raised in other provinces, reflecting a broader national debate. Internationally, the issue is familiar. Campaigns against the so-called tampon tax have succeeded in countries ranging from India to the United Kingdom, where governments eventually acknowledged that menstrual products are necessities, not luxuries. Pakistan now finds itself at a similar crossroads.
Critics of reform argue that Pakistan’s strained fiscal situation leaves little room for new exemptions. The country relies heavily on indirect taxation to meet revenue targets, and policymakers often resist carving out additional tax-free categories. Yet activists counter that the sums involved are modest compared with the social costs of period poverty. They frame the debate not as a budgetary technicality but as a matter of public health and gender justice.
Omer’s legal reasoning weaves together constitutional principles and social reality. She invokes equality before the law, the right to dignity, and the state’s obligation to promote social justice. By taxing a product used exclusively by women for a biological process beyond their control, the state, she argues, creates a gender-specific financial burden. In effect, women pay a recurring “biological tax.”
The Lahore High Court has admitted the petition and issued notices to relevant government bodies, setting the stage for what could become a landmark ruling. Even before a verdict is delivered, the case has shifted public conversation. Television panels, newspaper columns and social media debates now openly discuss menstruation — a subject that, until recently, many preferred to avoid. For Omer, that visibility is itself a form of progress. Law, she has suggested, can serve as a spotlight. By placing menstrual health in a courtroom, she forces institutions to acknowledge what households have long concealed. The petition reframes pads not as embarrassing commodities but as instruments of health, dignity and participation in public life.
Whether the court ultimately strikes down the tax or pressures lawmakers to amend the schedule, the broader struggle will continue. Removing a levy will not, on its own, dismantle stigma or ensure universal access. Schools still need better sanitation facilities. Public awareness campaigns still need to challenge myths. But tax reform would signal a powerful shift in how the state values women’s bodies and needs.
In the end, Omer’s fight is about more than a percentage on a receipt. It is about the message embedded in fiscal policy. When a government taxes a necessity, it makes a statement about whose needs count. By asking Pakistan’s courts to recognise menstrual products as essential, Mahnoor Omer is asking her country to recognise something equally fundamental: that equality cannot stop at rhetoric. It must extend, even, to the price of a packet of pads.
I remember the first time I bought sanitary pads. I wrapped them in another plastic bag, as if they were contraband. Not drugs. Not alcohol. Cotton and cellulose. But somehow more shameful.
And now, decades later, we are still pretending that menstruation is a private embarrassment rather than a public policy issue.
So when a young lawyer stands up and challenges the so-called tampon tax, Auntie pays attention. Because this is not just about rupees and receipts. It is about who gets to define what is “essential.”
Milk? Essential.
Medicine? Essential.
Electricity? Essential.
But bleeding — regularly, predictably, biologically — apparently that’s a luxury.
I have lived long enough across Asia to know that menstruation is one of patriarchy’s quietest control mechanisms. It is hidden, shamed, joked about, whispered over. It keeps girls out of classrooms. It keeps women out of offices for a few days every month. It teaches us early that our bodies are inconvenient.
And then the state taxes that inconvenience.
Let’s be honest: no finance ministry sits around plotting how to oppress women through sanitary pad taxation. Bureaucracies are rarely that dramatic. What happens instead is something more mundane — and more revealing. Men design tax systems. Men dominate fiscal committees. Men do not menstruate. And so menstrual products slide into the same category as cosmetics or consumer goods.
Out of sight. Out of policy.
That is why this legal fight matters. Because when a lawyer walks into court and says, “This violates equality,” she is forcing the system to acknowledge something it has comfortably ignored: women’s bodies are not niche concerns.
Some critics will say the country cannot afford tax exemptions. Auntie would gently ask: can it afford the cost of girls missing school? Of infections? Of half the population quietly paying a biological surcharge?
The phrase “tampon tax” sounds technical. Almost polite. But what it really represents is a deeper question: who bears the invisible costs of society?
This case will not dismantle stigma overnight. It will not suddenly make menstruation a dinner-table topic. But it does something powerful. It moves periods from the bathroom into the courtroom. From whispers into legal language.
And my dear readers, that is how change begins — not with silence, but with someone brave enough to say: enough.