‘Shrinking sanitary pad’ scandal leaves Chinese women seeing red – Firstpost

An interesting discussion took place on Chinese social media networks Weibo and Xiaohongshu; Many women claimed that many major companies were reducing the size and quality of sanitary pads.

Numerous posts on the issue caused a huge uproar and major sanitary pad manufacturers are now apologizing for it. The turmoil also spread to larger grievances; some complain about the lack of feminine hygiene products in public spaces.

So what exactly is going on? What’s all this hubbub about?

Honey, I made the pads smaller

The controversy began in late November, when a woman posted on social media that the 10 sanitary pads she measured with a measuring tape were 5 to 20 millimeters shorter than the length stated on the packaging.

“Is it really that difficult to make standard pads around 200mm long these days?” she said on women’s lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu. “It’s time to reject these companies’ covetousness of women’s goods.”

Other women have jumped on the bandwagon, complaining that the companies producing these sanitary pads are deceptive. Someone wrote on Weibo: “The length of the inflated sanitary pad is the same as the insoles under men’s feet.”

Another wrote: “Sanitary pads are already incredibly expensive and now they even change the length. Do these people who try to make money from women in this way have no morals?

Amidst this turmoil, local news outlet Paper They published a report in which they analyzed the size of 20 different sanitary pads and found that almost 90 percent of the products were “shrunken”, at least 10mm shorter than claimed on their packaging.

The situation soon snowballed, with sanitary pads becoming a hot topic on China’s social media. From November 23 to 24, hygienic products became one of the hottest topics on Weibo. The topic ‘what to use after the sanitary pad scandal’ rose to 11th place on the Hot Search list on Weibo.

fuel the fire

The situation got worse when popular Chinese brand ABC ignored the women’s complaints, with a customer service responding to the complaint saying “if you cannot accept the length difference then you can choose not to buy it.”

Others have also tried to justify the shrinkage of pads by saying that small changes in product sizes are the norm and accepted by law. In fact, Chinese law allows size differences. According to the rules, a difference of 4 percent is allowed, which corresponds to approximately 10-15 millimeters.

But women in China are not happy, they criticize companies and remain angry.

The situation came to such an extent that ABC issued a proper apology, saying its earlier response was “inappropriate” and promising “zero deviation” in its products. ABC founder Deng Jingheng said: China Daily“We solemnly promise here that we will eliminate negative deviations in some products in December and that we will fully deliver all our products to national standards without any deviations by March next year.”

“We ask for some time to make adjustments,” he said. “Netizens are right that we, as companies, need to hold ourselves to higher standards and serve women with better quality products.”

Other brands such as Shecare and Beishute have also issued their own apologies in recent days.

Past rows of sanitary pads in China

The shrinking size of sanitary pads is not the first incident in the country where discussions about feminine products and menstruation have arisen.

Last year, many female activists took to social media to demonstrate against high tax rates on menstrual-related products such as tampons and sanitary pads. In China, sanitary pads are subject to a whopping 13 percent Value Added Tax (VAT), the highest tax level, on par with the tax rate on imported goods.

Then came the horrific incident in 2021, where a well-known Chinese sanitary pad company came under fire after a needle was found inside one of its products. The company Space 7 later apologized for the problem.

In 2016, Chinese authorities busted a massive “fake sanitary towel” operation in southeast China, where millions of sanitary pads were produced in a factory without proper hygiene measures and packaged into popular brands.

China is still pretty conservative when it comes to menstrual issues. For example, there was a big debate about whether high-speed trains should sell pads in 2022. Even today, some argue that stores should continue to use black bags when selling them.

With input from agencies