Financial Analysis on Period Poverty in Santa Clara County
The Santa Clara County Division of Equity & Social Justice and Office of Women’s Policy concluded that around 14.91% of women in Santa Clara remain unable to pay for their period products. In 2021, there was a bill passed in California (AB-367) to help dispel period poverty statewide, originally promising to stock period products such as pads and tampons in 50% of all bathrooms on school and college campuses and public agencies. However, since restocking period products remains expensive for the government, they amended the bill to only stock free period products in one centralized location of each school and college campus and none in public agencies. Our ultimate goal is to try and amend California or Santa Clara policies by restocking the bathrooms with reusable period products instead of disposable period products or also suggest to stock half the amount of disposable period products with reusable products. Statewide, restocking the bathrooms with reusable products would cut d...