TACKLING INEQUALITIES: One Tampon at a Time.
Meet the 24 year old who, in her spare time, saved women in the UK
hundreds of pounds a year. Laura Coryton is a living proof that your
‘I’m just one person, I can’t make a change’ excuse just won’t cut it.
“When I wrote the tampon tax campaign, I expected no more than
200 signatures. I was procrastinating and looking for anything to do
that wasn’t my dissertation, and so I set up a page on Change.org. By
the end of the first night, we’d reached 2000 signatures.” Anyone
who’s ever had to write any kind of essay can relate to Laura’s
procrastination, but how many of us can say we’ve used that time for
anything productive?
It was May 2014 that she first launched her campaign – “Stop Taxing Periods. Period.”. A year later, it had gained enough traction to get on the radar of David Cameron, Prime Minister at the time, and by January 2016, the Treasury vowed to axe tampon tax.
On her wayback to the UK from a holiday in Thailand, whilst waiting for adelayed flight connection in India, she received a call from the BBCinviting her for an interview on national television that evening. Shewent “straight from the airport to the studios, horrendously jet-lagged, without realising the magnitude of the situation”.
From that moment onwards, the campaign went from strength tostrength. By March 2016, she made history when Parliament
accepted a tampon-tax- ending amendment proposed by MP Paula Sherriff. Only slowing down when the Brexit referendum threw in some complications, the amendment is on track to be implemented by 2022 at the very latest.
As well as this huge achievement, Laura also has an impressive CV under her belt. She’s spent time campaigning with the Labour Party,
has a Political Science bachelor’s degree from Goldsmiths University and is now studying for an MA in Women’s Studies at Oxford.
But the political career she gained overnight hasn’t always been plain sailing for Laura: “There’s no crash course for giving live television interviews on every news channel, or for answering tricky questions!” Whilst navigating this minefield she’s received undue
backlash for things as out of her control as the infamous Nigel Farage deciding to back her campaign, and received “some really weird things via email. From songs and poems to marriage proposals.” Also known as “The Tampon Tax Girl’ all across the UK, Coryton has been
pushed to the forefront of British Politics.
However, don’t let this put you off following in her footsteps. To anyone who is passionate about making any kind of change she urges: “Oh my gosh just do it! What are you waiting for! Never in a million years did I think my campaign would be successful, and yet it
was, so what’s stopping yours from being next?”.
Support Laura’s next mission by following her ‘End Period Poverty. Period.’ campaign at Change.Org.