Growing up in Rawalpindi, a city adjacent to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, Mahnoor Omer remembers the shame and anxiety she felt in school when she had periods. Going to the toilet with a sanitary pad was an act of stealth, like trying to cover up a crime.“I used to hide my pad up my sleeve like I was taking narcotics to the bathroom,” says Omer, who comes from a middle-class family – her father a businessman and her mother a homemaker. “If someone talked about it, teachers would put you down.” A classmate once told her that her mother considered pads “a waste of money”.“That’s when it hit me,” says Omer. “If middle-class families think this way, imagine how out of reach these products are for others.”Now 25, Omer has gone from cautious schoolgirl to national centrestage in a battle that could reshape menstrual hygiene in Pakistan, a country where critics say economics is compounding social stigma to punish women – simply for being women.In September, Omer, a lawyer, petitioned the Lahore High Court, challenging what she and many others say is effectively a “period tax” imposed by Pakistan on its more than 100 million women.Pakistani governments have, under the Sales Tax Act of 1990, long charged an 18 …
