Following the Autumn Statement on Wednesday, women all over Britain have been in uproar. Why? Because George Osborne has decided to direct the £15 million pounds the treasury receives from the tampon tax into women’s charities and services. As an article in The Guardian says here:
Women will now fund services that protect them from violence perpetrated almost entirely by men. Hey, men, not only do you not have to pay for violence that you inflict on women, but when we get raped, abused or brutalised, we won’t cost the state anything either! What message is that sending other than violence against women is some kind of “women’s issue”? It’s not. It’s largely a male issue.
And The Independent has chimed in, too:
Since the Tory government has failed women in so many ways, it makes undeniable sense for it to help us to help ourselves. Give a woman a tampon and she’ll use it for free; teach a woman to pay tampon tax and she won’t even cost anything extra to the state when she gets raped, attacked or laid off at work.
So if you’re a woman escaping from an abusive relationship in the Chancellor’s Britain, you can now pay for your own counselling through the redistribution of an unfair tax on your sanitary products. Isn’t that just perfect? It has a beautiful circularity, kind of like the menstrual cycle itself.
However, this view is misguided. The government cannot get rid of the tax completely due to EU laws, so they’re going to receive an income from it, no matter how much various women dislike that fact. Isn’t it therefore a good thing Osborne is at least diverting it into something that the women who pay the tax will directly benefit from? Would these groups rather the government used the money to bomb Syria? Reduce the bank levy? Cut taxes on top earners? Probably not.
From 2010-2015 the Tories spent £40 million on support services and charities aiming to help women who have suffered from domestic violence or abuse. This clearly shows that yesterday’s policy announcement is nothing new: taxpayer’s money has always been going towards helping women's organisations. The difference is, women can now be safe in the knowledge that their £1.50 of tampon tax money per year is at least being spent on a cause they agree with.
Stop complaining about this decision, there’s no bloody point.