[Editorial] Free Public Sanitary Pads? This Is Not a Policy for Women

The remarks made at the Blue House cabinet meeting on January 20 about reviewing the free provision of sanitary pads are framed as an effort to ease women’s cost-of-living burden. However, this has raised concerns that, under the pretext of helping women, the government would not only intervene excessively in the market but also adopt a typically populist approach that is hard to call welfare.

Sanitary pads are clearly an essential consumer good. But the fact that something is essential does not automatically make it an item that the government should directly provide. If the price is burdensome, the first question should be: why is it expensive? Presenting “free provision” as the conclusion without first examining the structural factors that distort prices—such as raw material costs, distribution stages, import regulations, certification and labeling systems, and excessive administrative regulation—puts policy in the wrong order.

Once started, free provision is a policy that is difficult to reverse. Whether the recipients are low-income groups or teenagers, the logic that “essential goods should be given for free” can easily expand, and there is a strong possibility that it will quickly lead to demands for universal provision. If that happens, continuous fiscal spending and administrative costs will become structurally entrenched, and the burden will be passed on to future generations and other citizens. Welfare cannot be judged by good intentions alone. Welfare policies that expand while ignoring fiscal sustainability ultimately leave a burden on everyone.

An even bigger problem is the idea that the government would define and supply “basic quality sanitary pads.” The moment the state sets quality standards and prices, market competition weakens and corporate innovation contracts. Consumers, who had been able to compare and choose among a variety of brands, price ranges, and functions, are reduced to passive recipients who must conform to a state-designed “standard.” It is also difficult to rule out the possibility that the private sanitary pad market would shrink and that lobbying and inefficiency surrounding supply and budgeting would grow.

The core of policy for women should not be “free,” but the expansion of choice and autonomy. If the real goal is to reduce the burden of sanitary pad costs for those who truly need support, then vouchers or cash assistance based on income standards, rather than free in-kind provision, could be an effective alternative that minimizes market distortion.

Free public sanitary pads may be a comforting slogan, but in the long run they help neither women, nor the market, nor public finances.

2026. 1. 21.

Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: [논평] 공짜 공공생리대? 여성들을 위한 정책이 아니다

Author: Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

Date: 2026-01-21

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=comment&pn=1&idx=28529