Over 10,000 sales in one week. The Tampon Book was a resounding success upon its release with the Germans. For good reason, this book detonates in a library: its cover contains a box of 15 stamps. Launched by the German start-up The female company, this book is more a communication blow than a bedside reading. The authors of this operation wish to alert German public opinion to the persistence of unfair taxation on periodic protection. Across the Rhine, tampons are taxed at 19.6%, which remains excessively high for basic necessities, say its detractors. By way of comparison, a book is taxed at 7%, recalls The Female Company, which therefore imagined The Tampon Book as a means of circumventing this tax, perceived as sexist.
This initiative was accompanied by a petition requesting the withdrawal of this buffer tax which has collected to date more than 177,000 signatures.
A debate around the pink tax far from over
The debate around the pink tax is not only agitating Germany. In Australia and India, protests by feminist activists resulted in the abolition of this tax on tampons and sanitary napkins. In France, the subject is still part of the demands of feminists although the government has lowered the tax from 20 to 5.5% on these products. But some voices like the Georgette Sand collective, spearhead of the contestation against the buffer tax in 2005, deplore that this change did not have repercussions on the actual selling prices, maintaining the menstrual insecurity. In November 2018, an online petition addressed to the Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn asked for the free periodic protection.
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