I must have been eight or nine, sometime in the 1970s, when we walked past Gul Brothers in Aabpara Market, Islamabad. It was one of those shops run entirely by men, selling women's undergarments and intimate products over a counter where women had to ask in lowered voices. A packet of sanitary pads was displayed outside. I asked my mother what it was. She slapped me. Not out of cruelty, but reflex, the kind of instinct that comes from never having been given language for your own body. She was educated, employed, and modern by all standards of her time. The silence she enforced was not hers alone; it had been inherited. The question itself felt dangerous. Not because it was wrong, but because it disturbed an order nobody had ever explicitly agreed to, yet everyone enforced. I did not ask again for a long time.
Years later, working on sexual and reproductive health and rights, I realised that silence had not disappeared. It had simply moved from market counters into policy rooms, academic spaces, and institutional frameworks. Menstrual health was tolerated as hygiene, but the moment it entered rights, autonomy, or economic justice, discomfort returned quickly. Then came Gen Z. They did not wait for permission. Periods, bodies, autonomy—these are now discussed openly across platforms beyond institutional control. The discourse is imperfect, sometimes careless, but it has broken a long-standing monopoly over silence.
That is the context in which the recent “pink tax” announcement must be understood. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb announced in Budget 2026–27 the removal of 18% sales tax on sanitary pads, menstrual products, and contraceptives. The celebration is justified. Two brilliant young women deserve specific recognition for making this possible. Bushra Mahnoor, Executive Director and co-founder of Mahwari Justice, built a sustained advocacy campaign rooted in lived scarcity growing up in Attock, rationing pads among four sisters, sometimes forced to extend usage beyond safe limits. Her organisation gathered over 10,000 signatures in 2025, demanding tax removal and highlighting a simple contradiction: products like cattle semen were treated as essential, while menstrual products were taxed as a luxury.
Mahnoor Omer, a lawyer from Rawalpindi, filed a constitutional petition before the Lahore High Court challenging the entire tax structure on sanitary products. She argued violations of Articles 9, 14, 25, and 37 of the Constitution, rights to dignity, equality, and social justice. Working with constitutional lawyer Ahsan Jehangir Khan, she challenged both the 18% sales tax and additional import duties that pushed the total burden close to 40%. Her petition was admitted, and notices were issued to the state. Her memory of hiding a pad in school became part of the legal argument itself. These are distinct contributions: mobilisation and constitutional litigation, and they should not be collapsed into one narrative. Both deserve recognition on their own terms.
I say this with a complicated sense of continuity. In 2010, my book A Tax Break for Economic Freedom: The Case of Divorced, Disabled and Never-Married (Above 40) Pakistani Women was published by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. It was based on work that I began after the earthquake of 2005. It argued for targeted fiscal relief for women excluded from inherited or marital economic protection systems. At the time, there was little institutional interest. The ecosystem was largely widow-centric because widowhood fit a socially legible narrative of vulnerability. Other categories of women—divorced, disabled, never-married—did not. I presented this work in multiple forums. It was often ignored, sometimes mocked. Over time, similar ideas reappeared in more funded spaces under different framings and actors. I document this not as a grievance, but as a pattern: how ideas become acceptable only after institutional digestion.
The pink tax removal is a real victory and a photogenic one. It is also the easiest version of the struggle—symbolically powerful, politically safe, and easily celebrated across divides. The harder questions remain untouched. A 2024 UNICEF and WaterAid study found that only 12% of women in Pakistan use commercially produced sanitary pads. The remaining majority rely on cloth or improvised materials, often without clean water or privacy. A 2025 UNICEF report confirmed there is still no national menstrual health policy. A pack of pads costs around Rs 450. For households earning close to Rs 33,000 a month, menstrual products compete directly with food, utilities, and medicine. Tax removal helps, but it does not reach those who could not afford the product even before taxation. Meanwhile, rural women continue to manage menstruation without privacy or safe sanitation, often waiting until nightfall to access basic needs. Mobile connectivity has expanded faster than safe toilets.
Without enforcement, tax removal may not translate into lower retail prices. Without distribution systems, it will not reach those most excluded. Without infrastructure, it remains incomplete. What is needed now is not celebration alone, but policy follow-through. Retail price monitoring must ensure manufacturers pass on the benefit. Diaper taxation affecting childcare, disability care, and elder care remains unaddressed. Free menstrual product distribution in schools, hospitals, and transport hubs is already feasible, as seen in countries like Scotland and New Zealand. Rural sanitation infrastructure must be treated as part of the same policy continuum. Finally, fiscal policy must expand beyond symbolic inclusion. Targeted income and property tax relief for divorced mothers, disabled women, and never-married women above forty remains absent from the system. It was proposed long ago; it remains unresolved.
The mubarak baad is deserved, but it cannot be mistaken for completion. The girl outside Gul Brothers did not know what she was looking at. She only knew she had asked a question and been silenced. Today, another generation is speaking, organising, and changing the law. That is progress worth acknowledging. But until dignity is treated as a fiscal principle, not just a moral one, the work is not finished.
