Washington — A schoolyard taunt against U.S. vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has vaulted a serious issue into the spotlight: that even in the world’s wealthiest nation, the struggle to afford menstrual supplies — known as “period poverty” — is a driving concern for the large portion of the population that menstruates.
In 2023, the Minnesota governor signed a state law mandating free menstrual products in schools. His support drew the ire of conservatives who questioned the bill’s language requiring pads and tampons in all school bathrooms — not just those designated for girls. And it earned him a moniker that opponents have strung around his neck as he seeks the vice presidency: “Tampon Tim.”
Much of the online chatter using the nickname devolves into crude, sexual claims about Walz.
"He’s sick," said Jesse Watters, a host on the conservative Fox news network, shortly after Walz was announced as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate. "Walz forced schools to stock tampons in boys’ bathrooms. Tampons in fourth grade boys’ bathrooms. What a freak. What do boys need tampons for?"
Presidential candidate Donald Trump said at a recent rally in North Carolina: “He wants tampons in boys’ bathrooms. I don’t think so. Tampons!”
What the law actually says – and doesn’t
But the Minnesota state law’s language, advocates argue, does not say that. It makes no mention of sex or gender, saying only that supplies must be provided “to all menstruating students” in “restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12.”
The editorial board of the state’s largest newspaper agreed, calling the $2 million initiative “good and necessary policy.” The paper also quoted a top Minnesota school administrator who said that the law’s language gives flexibility to schools to stock products in unisex bathrooms, girls’ bathrooms, with the school nurse or in the front office — and that, more than eight months into the program’s rollout, she had heard no concerns from schools about implementation.
Opponents of similar initiatives have not given clear reasons for their opposition. In June, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed the Menstrual Hygiene Products Grant Program, a $6.4 million plan to provide free pads and tampons for kindergarten through 12th grade students in his state. The conservative governor did not say specifically afterwards why he vetoed this measure — which was among about $900 million he cut from the state budget through the veto pen.
“Some of the stuff I don’t think was appropriate for state tax dollars,” he said. “Some of the stuff are things that I support but that we have state programs for.”
And this month, the Florida governor called out Walz directly, saying: “This is a guy that used Minnesota tax dollars to put tampons in the boys’ bathrooms throughout the schools in Minnesota. Are you kidding me?"
‘We cannot learn when we are leaking’
But all the talk about bathrooms and other issues, menstrual health advocates say, obscures the original point of the Minnesota bill. Its sponsor, Rep. Sandra Feist, said high school students lobbied her to present the legislation to combat the dire effects of period poverty.
“One out of 10 menstruating youth miss school because of their menstrual cycle or during the menstrual cycle because of a lack of access to menstrual products and resources,” she said in presenting the bill. “This absenteeism impacts educational attainment directly and indirectly, through its correlation with increased depression and anxiety.”
In the United States, it costs an average of just under $9 per month to cover period supplies, according to a study of average costs worldwide. But that cost can come down dramatically when school districts purchase the products in bulk.
Elsewhere, costs are lowest in India — estimated at just under $3 — and highest in Algeria, where a month’s worth of supplies costs upwards of $34.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, when challenged recently by Trump adviser Stephen Miller to explain Walz’s support of the law, countered by highlighting Pennsylvania’s similar law, on social-media platform X: “No girl should have to worry about anything but her work at school each day.”
And as then high-school student Elif Ozturk said in appealing to Minnesota legislators: “I have friends who decided to just skip school during that time, because we cannot learn when we are leaking.”
VOA asked both presidential campaigns to outline how they would address period poverty, if elected. Neither responded.
Not just a US problem
These are familiar refrains in the developing world, where period poverty and menstrual shame are often documented. There, NGOs have intervened in some communities with programs that provide reusable supplies and work to destigmatize menstruation.
The American Bar Association says in the developed world, Canada, Scotland and Spain recently enacted laws that aim to support people who menstruate. Taiwan, Japan, Zambia, are on a growing list of places that have menstrual leave protections, and Australia, China, Chile and Zimbabwe are considering steps as well.
Campaigners say that the U.S. government could make several moves. Those include making supplies freely available through Medicare, federal educational programs and shelters; eliminating sales taxes on hygiene products; and by adding them to the list of items available through assistance programs. And they point to a pending bill that would, in addition to some of those things, require that all employers of more than 100 people provide free supplies.
About 25 states — including Arizona, Michigan, New Mexico, New Jersey and Ohio — have passed laws providing free products in schools.
Estimates of how much this costs vary widely — ranging between $2 and $29 per student per year. Overall spending by U.S. public schools averages $16,280 per pupil each year, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Studies find that nearly one in four American students has trouble affording menstrual supplies, which are often taxed, unlike other essential medical supplies, and have seen steep inflation in recent years.
‘Why is a girl with a period such a big, scary thing?’
Michela Bedard, executive director at PERIOD, an advocacy group, argues that this is not a personal problem, but a social one.
“When people who require menstrual products — which is over half of our population — can't fully engage in school, can't fully engage in work or a commute to work, or athletics, or all the scholastic activities they want, it brings us all down, doesn't it?” she told VOA. “We don't talk about hunger that way. We often don't talk about other basic needs that way. And so period products need to be considered part of the list of essential supplies that society needs to rely on to live their full selves.”
And, she said, younger Americans are more accepting — and are the force behind many of the new state laws.
This new attitude may be best reflected in a stalwart of the American teen literary scene, Seventeen magazine. As recently as the turn of the century, this glossy, bubbly American teen rag printed a page in every issue of short, reader-submitted anonymous tales. And that page, every month, reliably featured at least one paragraph-long horror story of the same exact narrative, which was posited as the worst nightmare of every high-school menstruator: Oh no my period happened in front of my crush! I was SO EMBARRASSED I wanted to just die!!!!
That attitude is long gone, as reflected in a 2016 piece in that same magazine, outlining the exact same scenario of a crush learning a biological truth about his 16-year-old admirer and then shaming her for it.
Instead, she rejects the shame, saying: “Why is a girl with a period such a big, scary thing? And I decided: It's not. A period is not something embarrassing. It's a sign that you're healthy and that your body is doing what it's supposed to.”
Bedard told VOA that Walz should take a cue from today’s teens and wear his nickname with pride.
“He is Tampon Tim to me,” she said. “He's my kind of governor. I think that we need to lean into names like that, because it normalizes all the work that we at PERIOD have been doing for years. This is not a controversial issue.”
