This year, the 'tampon-tax' ended in the UK. But this is not the first time Conservatives have been interested in menstrual products. Here's PM Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, with developers of the first Tampax plant in Soviet Ukraine.

The planned Tampax plant in Ukraine would draw on British Tampax manufacturing and workers to get established, making it an exciting proposal for international (almost post-Soviet) business expansion. Thatcher supported this as a good opportunity for Tambrand Inc UK.

The Soviet plant, named 'Femtech', was the first to make menstrual products in the region, effectively ending the black market system through which many women acquired Tampax and other Western brands earlier.

Perhaps due to menstrual taboos, this unusual international case of Soviet business collaboration is not well known. But Harvard Professor Paul Lawrence understood its unique place in post-Soviet economic history and used it as a case study in the 1990s.

Lawrence' colleague at Harvard, Prof Willis Emmons, put together a fascinating written account about Femtech: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=11750 So a generation of Harvard Business students may well have come across menstrual products when learning about Soviet economics.

For fascinating histories of Soviet menstrual culture and technologies, Dr Pavel Vasilyev's work (Red Days on the Calendar: A Cultural History of Soviet Menstruation) is key: https://polonsky.vanleer.org.il/dr-pavel-vasilyev/

In 2018, The Conservatives established the Period Poverty Task Force, inviting Procter & Gamble, Essity, and PHS to the meetings (Procter & Gamble bought Tampax in 1997). In contrast to a similar policy initiative in Scotland, corporations were involved from the start in England.

Collectively these examples are beginning to suggest the contours of a specific Conservative British approach to menstrual policy. It will be fascinating to see how the results compare with other political approaches to menstrual stigma elsewhere which depend less on corporations

The Femtech history forms one chapter in my forthcoming book. If you or anyone you know recalls Femtech and their products, please get in touch!