{"id":75014,"date":"2025-11-03T19:00:29","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T10:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2025\/nov\/03\/the-young-lawyer-taking-pakistan-to-court-over-its-unfair-period-tax"},"modified":"2025-11-03T19:00:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T10:00:29","slug":"the-young-lawyer-taking-pakistan-to-court-over-its-unfair-period-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=75014","title":{"rendered":"The young lawyer taking Pakistan to court over its unfair \u2018period tax\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mahnoor Omer hopes the case will put public pressure on the government to make sanitary products affordable in a country where they cost too much for most women<\/p>\n

For a 25-year-old, seeing her name written on official papers at Lahore\u2019s high court was daunting. But the case of Mahnoor Omer v Federation of Pakistan has now had its first hearing and Omer, a young lawyer from Rawalpindi taking on her government, has moved from relative obscurity to becoming a headline-making activist.<\/p>\n

Omer is challenging the country\u2019s \u201cperiod tax\u201d, which sees only a small proportion of women in Pakistan able to buy sanitary pads thanks to high taxes and duties which, according to Unicef<\/a>, can add up to 40% to the retail price. One study found <\/a>that only 16.2% of women in rural areas used pads due to the cost.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mahnoor Omer hopes the case will put public pressure on the government to make sanitary products affordable in a country where they cost too much for most womenFor a 25-year-old, seeing her name written on official papers at Lahore\u2019s high court was dau…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5045,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[59,566,86,60,1539,61,1792,617,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-development","category-global-health","category-law","category-pakistan","category-reproductive-rights","category-south-and-central-asia","category-womens-health","category-womens-rights-and-gender-equality","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5045"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75015,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75014\/revisions\/75015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}