Store offers free sanitary towels

Period poverty – the inability for women on low incomes to afford suitable period products – may not be a well-known concept in the Faroes.

But it has become a particularly pressing issue in the UK amid the current cost-of-living crisis.

And the Scottish authorities are, as the first in the world, addressing this issue through legislation with the so-called Period Products Act, which came into force last month.

It requires local authorities to provide sanitary products free of charge to “anyone who needs them”.

No profits from periods

Jakob Lind Jakobsen, who manages the Skálin grocery store in Skála, thought this was a great idea, so he decided to have a chat with the store owners.

The result of this chat was that Skálin now offers a packet of Rema 1000 sanitary towels free of charge to any customer who needs it.

Other sanitary product brands in the store will be sold without profit. Our reporter did a quick check in other stores and found that removing a store’s profit margin from a sanitary product amounts to almost halving the retail price.

“This might not be a financially wise decision for us, but we don’t want to profit from periods,” says Jakobsen.

“We hope this will stimulate the debate about period poverty and period dignity here in the Faroes.”

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

More Faroese News in English.