Rose George: A devious plan painting domestic violence as solely a women’s issue

There it is, just behind my toilet, in a discreet washbag. The means for women who are being brutalised, raped, assaulted by men (in 2011-2012, according to the CPS, 94% of defendants in violence against women cases were men) to be protected, by a small piece of cotton that I stick up my vagina to deal with an unavoidable biological event.

That a tampon should be taxed is baffling and infuriating enough. But that George Osborne has chosen to divert the £15m raised by the “tampon tax” (actually VAT on what is ridiculously called “feminine hygiene”) towards funding women’s shelters and refuges is even more so.

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It’s brilliant really, because how can I be against women’s services getting funding, when their money has been slashed, when the amazing Eaves and their Poppy project have had to close? Refuge’s funding has dropped 80% in four years. How churlish it would be to object to them getting money, even though it’s money they should have been getting in the first place; even though it’s money that is coming from a woman-only tax.

Women will now fund services that protect them from violence perpetrated almost entirely by men. Hey, men, not only do you not have to pay for violence that you inflict on women, but when we get raped, abused or brutalised, we won’t cost the state anything either! What message is that sending other than violence against women is some kind of “women’s issue”? It’s not. It’s largely a male issue.

So, Gideon, don’t stop at the tampon tax. Get £15m from a tax on Gillette Mach 3 or that Friday pint or on the wages of Premier League footballers, who could lavishly fund women’s services and not notice. But that won’t happen, and Osborne has made it almost impossible to object to his apparently generous announcement. And that is just bloody devious.

Caroline Criado-Perez: While this tax exists, I’d rather money raised supported vulnerable women

No one can deny that the symbolism is dreadful. The “luxury” tax that women pay to mop up the bleeding from their wombs will now be used to mop up the women who’ve been assaulted or raped. Rather than turning the #tampontax into blood money, cuts to the women’s services sector made since the Tories came to power should be reversed.

According to Women’s Aid between 2010 and 2014, 32 specialist refuge services closed down; 10 specialist domestic violence services across England closed between April and July 2014. Polly Neate, who is chief executive of the charity, told me about a refuge in Bromley that has had its funding cut in half – on average its manager now has to turn away 10 women a day for each bed-space she is able to provide.

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On the other hand, £15m is not to be sniffed at. Neate estimates that the women’s services sector costs about £100m a year – and although this new revenue stream is not solely aimed at violence against women, it will still make a material difference. The £2m that has already been allocated to Women’s Aid will be spent on an early intervention programme, which, Neate says, they simply didn’t have the funds to do before.

We might all agree that it is deeply objectionable to class sanitary products as luxury items, while flapjacks and crocodile meat are counted as “essential” and therefore exempt from tax. But the reality is that the chancellor’s hands are tied. Under EU rules he simply cannot unilaterally zero-rate tampons. It is something that must be agreed in Brussels.

Until EU rules can be changed, I’d rather this tax on being female went towards providing services for vulnerable women. And in the long-term, we will continue to fight for proper funding for domestic violence services – and an end to the tampon tax.