For millions of Pakistani girls and women, menstruation is a monthly reality. But for many, managing it safely is also a question of Money, Access and Dignity.

For Mahnoor Omer, a young lawyer from Rawalpindi, that reality became a constitutional question.

In 2025, Omer filed a petition before the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi Bench challenging the sales tax imposed on menstrual products. Her petition, Mahnoor Omer v. Federation of Pakistan, argues that taxing sanitary products places a disproportionate burden on women and undermines constitutional guarantees of equality and dignity. The court has taken up the case, and the Revenue Division was added as a respondent.

At the heart of her argument is a deceptively simple question:

If menstruation is a biological necessity, why should the products needed to manage it safely be treated like a luxury?

When a tax becomes a gender issue

The issue is not simply the price of a packet of pads.

Pakistan’s menstrual-health research points to a much deeper problem: affordability, inadequate information, stigma and limited access to safe menstrual products. A study published in Frontiers in Public Health found widespread discomfort discussing menstruation and significant gaps in menstrual education among girls.

The figures are particularly stark.

According to reporting on Omer’s petition, only around 12% of menstruating women in Pakistan can afford commercially produced sanitary pads, while many others are pushed toward less safe alternatives.

That means the debate over taxation reaches far beyond economics.

It touches health. Education. Dignity. Equality. And women’s participation in society.

When a girl cannot afford menstrual products, the consequences can include missed school, restricted mobility and greater exposure to unhygienic practices. Period poverty can quietly turn a normal biological process into a barrier to opportunity.

From emergency relief to systemic change

Mahnoor Omer’s legal challenge is part of a wider movement of young Pakistani women refusing to treat menstruation as a subject that must remain invisible.

One of the most prominent voices is Bushra Mahnoor, co-founder of **Mahwari Justice.

Her activism began with a deeply personal memory. As a child during the 2010 floods, Bushra encountered a girl at a relief camp experiencing her first period without understanding what was happening to her body. Years later, when the devastating floods of 2022 hit Pakistan, that memory returned. She and Anum Khalid founded Mahwari Justice to ensure that menstrual needs would not be forgotten in disaster relief.

With volunteers and donors, the movement distributed menstrual-relief supplies across flood-affected communities. An early campaign reached *more than 100,000 people across 80 areas in six months, supported by around **130 volunteers*. ([Dawn][4])

Today, Mahwari Justice reports that its work has expanded to more than 150,000 relief kits, alongside school education, community outreach and policy advocacy.

Together, these young women demonstrate two different but connected forms of leadership:

Bushra took menstrual dignity into disaster-relief camps.
Mahnoor took menstrual equality into a courtroom.

One confronted the problem on the ground.

The other challenged the system behind it.

This is bigger than a packet of pads

The fight over menstrual taxation is ultimately a fight over a girl’s ability to participate fully in society.

Should a girl miss school because she cannot afford menstrual products?

Should a woman have to compromise between household essentials and her own health?

Should a natural biological process become a source of shame because society refuses to talk about it?

And perhaps most importantly:

Can young Pakistani women challenge policies that affect millions of other women?

Mahnoor Omer’s answer is clear.

She has taken an issue traditionally confined to private conversations and placed it before a court as a question of constitutional equality and human dignity.

That is more than legal advocacy.

It is young women’s leadership in action.

Because gender equality is not achieved simply when girls enter classrooms.

It is achieved when they can speak, organise, challenge institutions, shape policy and demand better systems for the women who come after them.

Mahnoor did not accept period poverty as something women should silently endure. She turned it into a legal question.

And in doing so, she is asking Pakistan to confront a much larger question:

When a basic biological need becomes a barrier to dignity, who has the responsibility to remove that barrier?