Why are the sanitary napkins necessary every month so expensive？

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When you place an order for a cup of milk tea or coffee with a price close to that of 30 yuan, you may not realize how expensive a ten-dollar package of sanitary napkins is.

As early as 2020, netizens quarreled over the fact that 21.99 yuan could buy 100 pieces of bulk sanitary napkins. In the question of "dare to use such sanitary napkins", a sinking sanitary napkin market in China was gradually revealed [6]. Bulk sanitary napkins with 20 cents each are transported to towns and villages by post, accompanying these women to spend more than 2,000 days of their lives with menstruation.

And open the e-commerce website to search for "sanitary napkins", and the single-chip price of the top brands has already exceeded the mark of 1 yuan and even 2 yuan.

Are sanitary napkins really expensive? Why are some people reluctant to buy better sanitary napkins? What pushed up the price of sanitary napkins?

Writer Mei Jieyu once recorded her experiences in the west in the 1990s: "When their daughters grow up, they tend sheep, pick up seaweed and dig licorice roots like their mothers’ childhood, and then when they grow up, they use a rag bag plant ash to help them with their menstruation like their mothers and girls."

Before the invention of sanitary napkins, many women in China used to deal with the physiological period in this way. In some remote areas, the indigenous method continues to this day: yellow rough paper, old towels, old clothes and diapers may all become absorbent materials, except sanitary napkins.

If the price of sanitary napkins on the market is divided into three grades: low, middle and high, the corresponding single-chip price is lower than that of 1 yuan, 1-1.5 yuan and higher than that of 1.5 yuan [1].

(The price of a single sanitary napkin has already broken through the mark of 1 yuan and even 2 yuan.)

Considering that most people don’t use high-grade sanitary napkins, if the price of 1 yuan per daily sanitary napkin and 2 yuan per night sanitary napkin is slightly lower than the median, the average menstrual period of women in China is 5.8 days [2]. Assuming that they sleep for 8 hours and change a sanitary napkin every 3 hours during the day, a woman needs to use 5 daily sanitary napkins and 1 night sanitary napkin every day, which costs 7 yuan every day, and one menstrual period is about 42 yuan, which is 504 yuan a year.

If the replacement frequency is higher, sanitary napkins are more expensive and the physiological period is prolonged, the cost will be higher.

40 a month-50 yuan, what is this concept? In 2020, there are still 600 million people in China whose monthly income is less than 1,000 yuan [3]. The 40 yuan spent in a menstrual period means a day’s salary and children’s pocket money for half a year, which is enough to buy three people in the family to eat rice for more than half a month. Even among the people who don’t worry about eating and drinking, there are many people who are reluctant to charge more than a dozen video members a month.

More importantly, milk tea can be dispensed with, coffee can be dispensed with, and TV plays can be dispensed with, but sanitary napkins can’t be dispensed with.

"Poverty always seems to have a feminine face." Worldwide, women’s physiological products are very expensive.

There are 40 million women in the world suffering from "menstrual poverty", which is more than the total population of Canada [4]. In underdeveloped countries such as Bangladesh and Nepal, more than half of women can’t move normally during menstruation, and even are forced to stay in mud huts and cowsheds called "menstrual huts" [5].

(In Lebanon, some women still use this reusable sanitary towel/vision china)

In China, as early as 2017, the market penetration rate of sanitary napkins has reached 100%. On average, it seems that everyone is using sanitary napkins. But this figure can’t reflect the distribution of these sanitary napkins. We don’t know whether every woman in China can use sanitary napkins, especially qualified sanitary napkins [4].

Some scholars in Zhangxian County and Xihe County in Gansu Province found that rural supermarkets or canteens are full of counterfeit and counterfeit sanitary napkin brands, and the price is mostly 5-10 yuan /20 pieces, which is also the best-selling product. In fact, the total number of bacterial colonies in this batch of counterfeit sanitary napkins reached 680cfu/g, which seriously exceeded the standard and the quality was worrying [7].

A considerable number of women in China are probably using cheap but unqualified sanitary napkins; In contrast, it is the rising price of sanitary napkins. In the six years from 2016 to 2021, the average selling price of sanitary napkins in China increased from 0.66 yuan/tablet to 0.82 yuan/tablet [8].

So, why are genuine sanitary napkins so expensive?

Original title: "Sanitary napkins necessary every month, why are they so expensive?"

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