(The Center Square) — Women who work in fields and farms will have access to free menstrual products if the California Legislature passes a new law.
That bill got closer to becoming law on Tuesday afternoon after it was unanimously passed during a hearing by the Assembly Health Committee, a crucial step to eventually being implemented. It now goes to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Assembly Bill 2082, or the Rural Farmworkers Health Act, authored by Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez, R-Indio, was previously announced in a press conference held in the Capitol on March 24.
“Across California, more than 100,000 women work in our agricultural sector, many of them in rural regions like the Inland Empire and the Central Valley,” Gonzalez testified at the bill hearing in Sacramento. “These women are essential to planting, harvesting and processing the food that sustains California and communities across the country. Yet despite the critical role they play, many of these women face barriers to something as basic as women’s health.”
No woman should have to choose between her health and her livelihood, Gonzalez said.
“While today California has broad strategies addressing women’s health, there is no dedicated statewide program specifically focused on feminine hygiene product access in rural farmworker communities,” Gonzalez said. “The gap is what AB 2082 seeks to close.”
The bill proposes a $2 million allocation, which would be provided to organizations that already have a presence in heavily agricultural communities, Gonzalez told The Center Square after the hearing.
According to a study published in the American Journal of Community Psychology, women working on farms reported challenges related to proper hygiene and sanitation, especially as it relates to menstruation. That study also showed that women’s number of visits to the bathrooms were limited, that they had to use sign-in sheets to be able to go to the bathroom, and that hours would pass before they could change their menstrual pads.
Supervisors in these workplaces were even reported to have yelled at women who used the bathroom to change their tampons, the study reported.
“Their voice was heard, and I told them I’d fight for them,” Gonzalez told The Center Square after the committee passed the bill passed. “This is not a partisan issue. This is a dignity issue, and we have to be dignified when we do these things.”
One advocate of the bill told committee members that the bill gives the same protections to women in agricultural jobs that other women already benefit from.
“These women sustain our food system, but one in four cannot afford basic menstrual products,” Angela Cardenas, an organizer with Inland Congregations United for Change, testified during the bill hearing. “While other women in California benefit from laws ensuring access to menstrual products, farmworker women are often left behind.”
The bill would require the California Department of Public Health to work with nonprofits that assist immigrant communities to provide those products in the fields and other environments in which farmworker women work, according to the bill. Eight people at Tuesday’s hearing voiced their support for the bill, and no one expressed opposition.
