In 2021, the chairwoman of the Czech centre- right party TOP 09 Markéta Pekarová Adamová indirectly compared herself to Margaret Thatcher on the Insider podcast. She claimed to have similar life experience. Her father was a butcher, her mother a trained seamstress. Her parents allegedly never complained and didn’t moan about their dire situation. And so Pekarová knows that life is hard, but that everyone should help themselves.

Four years later, the Czech variation of the Iron Lady from TOP 09 appeared on Insider again. This time she came with the thesis that the topic of period poverty irritates her as a woman. “I don’t dispute that something like period poverty exists. That for some women and girls it can be a problem, but the solution in my opinion isn’t giving someone something for free or cheaper. The solution is enabling that person to earn money for it,” she declared. The TOP 09 chairwoman thus lived up to Thatcher’s famous quote: “There is no such thing as society, there are only individual men and women and there are families.”

Reproduction is thus, according to right-wing thinking, an individual problem only on the fiscal level, whilst on the moral level it is conversely everyone’s concern.

Whilst the marketing expert and Insider moderator Tomáš Jirsa wonders about how many types of poverty exist today, Pekarová adds that if we can address such a “marginal thing” as period poverty, it shows we’re really doing well. She emphasised that her advisers didn’t recommend she speak about this topic. And no wonder.

Paradoxically, one of the few meaningful activities of Health Minister and TOP 09 deputy chairman Vlastimil Válek is the recently adopted hygiene decree, which from 2026 introduces free menstrual products in schools. “For many girls this means less stress, less shame and more peace during the school day. (...) Dignified access to menstruation isn’t above standard. It’s a matter of course that we owe to every girl,” Válek stated.

Poverty has gender

When Pekarová defends her outrageous opinion on the podcast, she claims that poor people today receive benefits. And that therefore it makes no sense to reduce VAT [Value Added Tax - a consumption tax] on menstrual products, or even to give people sanitary pads for free. Everything they need, they can obtain from benefits. Benefits that the Spolu (Together centre-right coalition government reformed, so that poor people will be somewhat poorer again. Pekarová Adamová might be surprised, but even though there exists a right-wing-controlled Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, poverty also exists in the Czech Republic. And it affects women significantly more.

Structurally, single mothers are worst off in the Czech Republic. For instance, in April 2025, 34 per cent of single mothers with children saved on food and consumer goods. Half of these single mothers then save less than 250 crowns [approximately €10] per person monthly. The reality of such women doesn’t interest Markéta Pekarová Adamová, though; after all, she herself proved in an iDnes “experiment” that she could live — for a week — on minimum wage and still had a packet of flour left over.

The notion that the TOP 09 chairwoman will help women - as she claims - earn money for sanitary pads is naive for several reasons. Firstly, right-wing politics, as shown after four years of Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s government, has the consequence of merely further decline in real purchasing power of households. Secondly, the feminisation of poverty isn’t just about inequality in wages, or the absurd “pink tax” [additional cost applied to products marketed to women]. It’s also about all the unpaid care that women must perform in households, it’s about the career break they must take if they want to have children, and it’s about the fact that when families break up, women most often remain alone with the children.

When girls don’t have accessible sanitary pads and tampons, they tend to have higher absenteeism from school during menstruation. The situation where women must stuff their knickers with toilet paper or fear that the cheapest product will leak naturally affects their mental health. After all, depression and anxiety also afflict more women in the Czech Republic. And no wonder.

Shut up and give birth

Menstruation isn’t a choice. It’s not a luxury we can either afford or forgo. It’s part of life with a uterus - a life we don’t choose. As Eliška Koldová writes in her text on Second : Shift [Druhá : Směna - a Czech feminist publication], our bodies thus perform work, maintain their reproductive potential. The idea that financing menstruation is individual responsibility is all the more ridiculous at a moment when conservative commentators reproach women for giving birth to too few children. Reproduction is thus, according to right-wing thinking, an individual problem only on the fiscal level, whilst on the moral level it is conversely everyone’s concern.

As Eva Klíčová aptly noted in her commentary: “We have no right to anything, children are an obstacle to the system, we must somehow arrange it ourselves, parents, and especially women are punished for them in the inflexible labour market, the situation is also preserved by long but low maternity [benefits] (...) In such a situation, childlessness is a basic life strategy for not falling into economic and social despair, to the margins of society, in which crises accumulate, which the lean state often eagerly helps.”

Pekarová Adamová’s notion that as a woman you should simply work hard and earn money for everything is not only unempathetic and elitist, but also stems from a deep misunderstanding of poverty. That isn’t about people not working hard enough. Poverty isn’t an individual choice, but a direct consequence of politics. It arises structurally. And it doesn’t just manifest in not having money for sanitary pads. It affects your mental and physical health comprehensively.

Magdalena Dušková is an Alarm editor. She studied political theories and cultural anthropology at Charles University Faculty of Arts [FF UK]. She writes mainly about politics, feminism and also follows the Czech conservative scene. Together with Karolína Ježková, she creates the Hysterie podcast.