来源：《时代周刊》
原文见刊日期：2022年6月20日
Most of the things that seeemed to disappear during the pandemic—the toilet paper, the yeast, the flour—have returned to shelves. Not so for products used primarily by women, like tampons, essential hygiene products to the roughly 40% of U.S. women who use them.
大多数在疫情期间消失的东西——卫生纸、酵母、面粉——都重新回到了货架上。但对于主要由女性使用的产品就不是这样了，比如卫生棉条，这是40%的美国女性使用的基本卫生用品。
“What’s been going on for a couple months is that organizations call us up and say, ‘We need tampons,’ and we go to our warehouse and there’s nothing there,” says Dana Marlowe, the founder of I Support the Girls, which provides feminine products for people experiencing homelessness. Her group, which depends on donations, has received half as many tampons this year as during the same span last year and 61% fewer than in 2020.
“几个月来，一些组织打电话给我们说，‘我们需要卫生棉条’，但我们去了仓库，那里什么都没有，”<我支持女孩>的创始人达娜·马洛说，她为无家可归的女性提供经期用品。她的组织依靠捐赠，今年收到的卫生棉条数量是去年同期的一半，比2020年减少了61%。
“To put it bluntly, tampons are next to impossible to find,” says Michelle Wolfe, a radio host, who is one of the many women to have vented on the internet about the tampon shortage.
“坦率地说，卫生棉条几乎是不可能找到的，”电台主持人米歇尔·沃尔夫说。她是众多在互联网上抱怨卫生棉条短缺的女性之一。
The companies that make tampons say supply-chain issues are causing the problem. Procter & Gamble is having trouble sourcing raw materials for feminine-care products and getting the finished products to retailers. Edgewell Personal Care experienced a severe staff shortage at its facility because of Omicron. Tampons are Class II medical devices, which means that because of quality-control regulations, companies can’t put just anybody on the assembly line, so production lagged behind demand.
生产卫生棉条的公司表示，供应链问题造成了当前的局面。宝洁公司在为女性护理产品采购原材料和将成品运送给零售商方面遇到了困难。由于奥密克戎的影响，埃奇韦尔个人护理工厂出现了严重的员工短缺。卫生棉条属于二类医疗设备，这意味着由于质量控制规定，公司不能让任何人都上装配线，因此生产落后于需求。
The raw materials that go into tampons—cotton and plastic—are also hard to find. This is the third straight year that demand for cotton has exceeded production, says Sheng Lu, a professor at the University of Delaware.
制作卫生棉条的原材料——棉花和塑料——也很难找到。特拉华大学教授卢胜表示，这是棉花连续第三年供不应求。
Increased demand, staffing shortages, raw-material shortages—none of these factors is unique to tampons. What makes this shortage particularly problematic is that people who get their periods every month have to keep buying tampons just as regularly. That steady demand has allowed companies to raise prices. Overall, the price of feminine-care products in the U.S. has risen 10.8% from a year ago. “Tampons are a staple product—a life necessity,” Lu says. Companies “will consider more price increases for these necessity products.”
需求增加、人手短缺、原材料短缺——这些因素都不是卫生棉条独有的。使这种短缺问题特别严重的是，每个月经期的人都必须定期购买卫生棉条。稳定的需求使企业得以提高价格。总体而言，美国女性护理产品的价格较上年同期上涨了10.8%。“卫生棉条是一种基本产品——生活必需品，”卢胜说。企业“将考虑对这些必需品提价。”
Thyme Sullivan, a female CEO who worked for 27 years at consumer packaged-goods companies including PepsiCo and Nestle before co-founding a period-products company, argues that it’s no coincidence that America’s big companies are mostly run by people who don’t need to buy the products in question. The CEOs of Procter & Gamble, Edgewell, and Unilever are men. There’s been no push to solve this supply problem, she argues, because many of the people determining prices and availability for feminine-care products do not use them.
百里香•沙利文是一位女性首席执行官，她曾在百事可乐(PepsiCo)和雀巢(Nestle)等消费品公司工作了27年，后来与人共同创办了一家经期产品公司。她认为，美国的大公司大多由不需要购买女性产品的人经营，所以发生女性产品短缺并非巧合。宝洁、Edgewell和联合利华的CEO都是男性。她认为，没有人会推动解决这个供应问题，因为许多决定女性护理产品价格和供应的人并不使用它们。