Montgomery County now offers free period products in all county buildings

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

Montgomery County has installed free period product dispensers in all county buildings.

Montco Chair of Commissioners Jamila Winder said the policy expands access to menstrual products and fights period poverty.

“It’s not something that people are openly talking about,” Winder said. “And so some of the challenges that people might have around this, getting period products, is maybe not as well-known.”

Pads and tampons will be available in all bathrooms in county buildings and facilities, including courthouses, health and human services buildings, parks and historic sites.

The policy benefits the more than 12,000 county residents of menstruation age who live below the poverty line and struggle to afford period products.

Pennsylvania doesn’t tax pads and tampons, categorizing them as “paper products.” But for people struggling financially, programs such as SNAP or WIC do not cover the purchase of period products.

Prices of pads and tampons have been hit hard by inflation in recent years. According to NielsenIQ data, average prices for tampons rose 9.8% between 2021 and 2022, while average prices for pads rose 8.3% during that same time frame.

A menstruating person on average spends $13.25 monthly on period products. That adds up to $6,000 total in the average 40 years of menstruation in a person’s lifetime.

Winder said she started looking into the county’s policy after learning from Gov. Josh Shapiro that first lady Lori Shapiro is working to expand access to period products across the state. She then met with the state’s Commission on Women and studied an existing county policy, which already provided period products at no cost in some county buildings. But the policy was not consistently implemented across all county facilities, so Winder proposed expanding and standardizing it.

Pennsylvania Commission on Women Executive Director Moriah Hathaway said in a statement that “adding free menstrual products in restrooms is a great step forward” and builds on statewide work the Shapiro administration is doing to reduce period stigma.

In July, Shapiro signed off on a $3 million grant program in the 2024-2025 budget to provide pads and tampons at no cost to school students.

“The Commission believes that women and girls across the Commonwealth deserve to have access to these products and Montgomery County is leading the way,” Hathaway said.

Winder said the county’s “leadership” on an issue that can be “taboo” will have an impact beyond the resources themselves.

“Imagine, you know, a young girl having to talk to someone, maybe in their school or with a community organization, and sharing that they don’t have access to the period products that they need when they get their period each month,” she said. “And so I think this policy, the fact that there’s now going to be access in all of our county buildings, in our county parks, we at least put that out there.”