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Abstract

The overall purpose of the paper is to analyze the free supply of menstrual items to primary and secondary school girls in New Zealand using the substantive equality principle. The New Zealand government’s incentive for free supply of the articles to menstruating girls was their worrying absenteeism at school due to menstrual poverty. Menstrual poverty limits school girls’ equal access to their fundamental right to education. In my analysis, I adopt a human rights approach, employing the substantive equality principle to reflect on this rationale to provide menstrual products to school girls who need them. My research cites scholarly texts, organizational and media works from multidisciplinary literature to support the free supply of sanitary products. Using this research, I demonstrate that the supply satisfies the multiple interpretations of substantive equality for the attainment of menstruating girls’ equal access to their right to education. The government program addresses menstrual poverty and facilitates the management of menstruation with dignity.

Author Biography

Aniketh Rao (LLB, LLM, PgCrt LTHE) is a Ph.D. Law candidate in the School of Law and Social Sciences at the University of the South Pacific. His multidisciplinary research areas of interest are human rights law; gender, sexuality and reproductive justice; substantive equality; decolonization of law; and feminist legal approaches. His research mainly engages with the approaches of substantive equality and egalitarianism in law and social justice to explore the content of rights-based responses. He has taught constitutional law, torts law, administrative law, and criminal law.

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