If you support that menstrual products should be safe, monitored and tested according to an agreed-upon standard set by experts, researchers, and manufacturers collectively, we urge you to contact your national standardization organization to ask them to vote ‘yes’ for the standardization of menstrual products and that you offer your active support on a new technical committee.
The deadline to vote is 31 Dec but your national standards organization may have an earlier deadline.
Background
In 2016, the Swedish Institute for Standards (SIS) – together with a number of interested stakeholders in Sweden – began a process to investigate the possibility of standardizing menstrual products. The lack of harmonized global standards to ensure the safety, monitoring and testing of menstrual products had become known and a working group consisting of engaged consumer organizations, innovation centers, entrepreneurs, researchers and advocates formed in order to drive standardization forward with the goal of creating a global harmonized standard.
In addition to addressing the gap in safety and quality control, there is a strong expectation that standardization will have a number of other important effects:
- Stimulating innovation by providing market newcomers with a platform of safety requirements, cutting back on their time to market.
- Facilitating innovation in the menstrual product industry is expected to further increase product variation in a historically homogeneous market.
- Increasing consumers’ ability to make an informed choice, with the fundamental principle that all consumers should have this right.
- Destigmatizing menstruation and menstrual products, which can contribute to greater gender equality.
These matters should be addressed on an international level, since, of course, they apply to all consumers of these products, globally.
The working group at SIS submitted a proposal to start a new Technical Committee (TC) in ISO through their consumer organization, COPOLCO. In the spring of 2021, a vote of support was held among COPOLCO’s 77 national member organizations: should ISO start a new field of technical activity? The vote indicated overwhelming support for the effort with 53 of 77 national member organizations voting ‘yes’!
Buoyed by the positive response, COPOLCO carried the errand forth to ISO and in October 2021, ISO opened the voting process among their 165 national member organizations. This vote will determine if ISO will start a new field of technical activity with a new Technical Committee.
In order for a new TC to be established, at least two-thirds of member countries must vote ‘yes’ AND at least five must volunteer to participate actively as experts in the standardization process. The working group at SIS has offered to hold the secretariat should the proposal be approved.
Call for Action
We urge you to contact your national standardization organization to ask them to vote ‘yes’ for the standardization of menstrual products and offer your active support on a new technical committee.
The deadline to vote is December 31, 2021 – but your national standards organization may have an earlier deadline.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact Anna Sjögren at SIS.
