Products and services marketed towards girls and women are substantially marked up compared to similar men’s products. According to a recent study, this gender tax (or “pink tax”) ends up costing females thousands of dollars.
The NYC Department of Consumer Affairs compared nearly 800 products with male and female versions sold at two dozen retailers in New York City. The results are infuriating:
On average, across all five industries, DCA found that women’s products cost 7 per cent more than similar products for men. Specifically:
- 7 per cent more for toys and accessories
- 4 per cent more for children’s clothing
- 8 per cent more for adult clothing
- 13 per cent more for personal care products
- 8 per cent more for senior/home health care products
In all but five of the 35 product categories analysed, products for female consumers were priced higher than those for male consumers. Across the sample, DCA found that women’s products cost more 42 per cent of the time while men’s products cost more 18 per cent of the time.
The biggest price discrepancy was for hair care products: Women pay 48 more for shampoo and conditioner than men — for nearly identical products. A pink Radio Flyer scooter is priced at $US49.99 ($70) and the red version for boys is $US24.99 ($35).
You can check out all the comparisons and examples in the PDF linked below, but unless you like paying more money for the same things packaged for men, avoid the marked up “women’s” products.
A Study of Gender Pricing in New York City [NYC Consumer Affairs via The Washington Post]
Comments
6 responses to “Always Buy The Men’s Version Of Products To Avoid The Gender Tax”
Also buy the human product rather than the dog one (where applicable) as the pet tax can be a 3x multiple.
Never buy men’s hair dye. It’s at least 3x dearer than comparable ladies stuff. And has way less colour options.
Some of this comes down to vastly different market dynamics between genders (market size, how essential the product is deemed (hair dye for instance)).
Some of it comes down to the fact that men are cheap.
Men arent fussed with fancy shampoos etc. SOMETIME (i use that loosely) there are good reasons why womens things are more expensive
If only it really was a tax, then we’d get some benefit out of it.
Yes, fight the sexist price gouging. Also fight the tendency to call any cost we don’t like a “tax”.
Because taxes are actually good things, that pay for positive social services, and while we may not always like paying them or all the things they are used for, at least they do some kind of good. And if we don’t like a tax we can vote in a government that will change it.
This is not a gender-tax, it’s worse. It’s a gender-price-gouge for personal gain. It is someone extracting excess profits by segmenting a market, and it should be called for what it is.
It’s hard enough convincing people that tax is not a dirty word without actually using the word as a pejorative.
It couldn’t be that they are different products tested on different people designed differently with different costs?