Welcome to BASE21

By Baek Ji-hyun, Reporter
white074@hotmail.com

You readers may be men or women. You all may know what are menses and about their biological functions. You may also know why menses are needed for human beings. If so, can you talk about menses openly? Whether you are a woman or a man, menses are generally taboo to talk about. Even though menses are a natural physiological phenomenon, people have been reluctant to talk about menses traditionally, but here are some women who talk about it openly. The main group of the cut-the-price movement of hygienic bands is this one. Have you heard about the cut-the-price movement of hygienic bands? Let's think about problems of disposable hygienic bands and the price-cut campaign.

1. The beginning of the cut-the-price movement of hygienic bands
Feminist issues related to hygienic bands became the focus of public attention from the middle of the 1990's through the efforts of a group who majored in women's studies. They took on interest in menses, and as an extension of menses, they started to discuss hygienic bands. The Menses Festival that young feminists have planned and sponsored since 1999, ascertained the concerns of the public in earnest, especially in the third Menses Festival in 2001, where the host organization brought up the issue of hygienic bands. This led to coverage by several news media about the safety of hygienic bands and the points at issue in terms of price, substitutes, and this news aroused interest from the general public. Recently, from August in 2002, a women's association, the Korea Women Min-woo-hoe is moving the cut-the-price movement of hygienic bands forward.

2.Reasons that we need to take an interest in this issue
Women have a menstrual period about 500 times in their lifetimes on average. It's about 7 or 8 years, one eighth of one's whole lifetime on a liberal calculation. Women have the menses for pretty much every period biologically, so for women, hygienic bands are a necessary of life. Nonetheless, a levy on value added tax on hygienic bands is an example of an unfair policy that doesn't reflect the biological specificities between men and women. The request to abolish the value added tax on hygienic bands will contribute to more policies being introduced which reflect the biological specificities between men and women. Another reason that we need to take an interest in this issue is to raising social interest in women's health. In the case of our country, the social interests related to women's health is rising, but supporting policies and budgets are inferior. Social measures related to women's health are needed as soon as possible.

3. Is the price of hygienic bands resonable?
According to a public opinion poll of women in 8 cities all over the country conducted by the Korea Women Min-woo-hoe, 90.3%(645 persons) of 717 respondents responded that the price of hygienic bands is expensive. To the question, 'Do you think that a value added tax on hygienic bands is necessary?', 92.6%(661 persons) answered that hygienic bands are a living necessary and the value added tax should be abolished. Only 1.5%(15 persons) answered that they are general goods and it is natural to levy the value added tax on such products.
4.What is value added tax?
Value added tax is a general consumption tax that is levied on the consumption of all goods and services and an indirect tax that is levied from an operator who has a legal obligation to pay taxes to an ultimate consumer. The amount of value added tax is the amount of sales tax( applying the tax rate to the cost of sales) minus the amount of buying tax(a share when we may have some goods and services). The tax rate is 10% by law of the value added tax in Korea.
There is a degressive feature in value add tax - levying it without regard to income level is disadvantageous to the lower income brackets. Namely, the lower income brackets have too much stress on their hands. As an appeasement policy to this phenomenon, many countries have policies to exempt certain individuals from value added tax or to lower the tax rates on living necessities and so on. Korea also is let off taxes or applies a zero rate to some goods and services for the welfare of people, and the necessaries of life(foodstuffs without processing, agricultural, livestock, marine, forest products, tap water, briquettes, anthracite, etc.) So, we can guess that the point of the issue of abolishing the value added tax on hygienic bands concerns whether hygienic bands are living necessities or not.

5.Necessity of tax exemptions for hygienic bands
If we adopt a policy to reduce the costs of basic necessities, especially for women to maintain their lives and for a social reduction in costs for living necessities of women, hygienic bands are representative products to this kind of policy. They are necessary for the greater part of women during their periods. Bands are products that are in high demand regularly regardless of price, so the degressive feature is remarkable. To relax the degressive feature of value added tax, we need to reduce the value added tax on hygienic bands.
Issues related to women are gaining a higher profile as time goes by. To keep up with this tendency, tax policies have to be changed in step with developments concerning national policies related to women. Some say that abolition of the value added tax is impossible because it is connected directly to the tax budgets of the nation, but the tax amount to be exempted accounts for such a small portion of the tax budget. This is 0.026% in terms of comparing the budget of the national tax with that of the value added tax, 0.078%.

The Konkuk Bulletin met manager, Kang Eun-kyung, of the Korea Women Min-woo-hoe, who is making progress in the cut-the-price movement for hygienic bands.

Q) How did you come to start this campaign? What's your purpose in starting this campaign?
A) Traditionally, menses is something to avoid talking about frankly. But menses is very important for the reproduction and preservation of the human species. It's a biological process, so we should be able to talk openly about it, and make honest demand related to the issue. Our function is identify the demand of consumers and making them a hot issue.

Q) Could you discuss the progress you have made in this campaign?
A) The Korea Women Min-woo-hoe started this campaign about two months ago. We held a debate on the subject 'Concerning the levy on value added tax for hygienic bands, what is the problem?' and conducted a road campaign to collect signatures and we are also collecting signatures on-line now. About twenty thousand people signed the petition.

Q) What's happening with this issue?
A) An Assemblyman, Jung Bum-goo who belongs to the Ministry of Gender Equality has already submitted a bill to abolish the value added tax on hygienic bands to the National Assembly, and it is under consideration. We are focussing our eyes on the result of this bill. We are waiting for the results of this bill.

Q) What is the plan of the Korea Women Min-woo-hoe in terms of solving this issue?
A) As I said before, we are watching the result of the bill under consideration carefully. We'll be comparing actively against the government in response to the result just as we have submitted a petition to the National Assembly. A social gathering will be held with a related business to establish a price for hygienic bands.