'Pink Tax' forces women to pay more

than men
Anne-Marcelle Ngabirano
Published 2:25 PM ET Tue, 28 March 2017 | Updated 5:37 PM ET Tue, 28 March 2017USA Today

Jessica Rinaldi | The Boston Globe | Getty Images

A woman reacts as she listens to a speaker during a rally at the Women's March on Washington, Jan. 21, 2017.

The "Pink Tax" has many women seeing red when it comes to gender inequity.

Whether it's razors, dry cleaning or toys, women still pay more for those gender-specific
items than men, studies show. As Women's History Month draws to a close, gender-based
pricing remains a stubborn issue that is yet to be solved, right along with equal pay for equal
work.

"Price discrimination adds another layer to the wage inequality women face, making it harder
sometimes for women to make ends meet," said Surina Khan, CEO of the Women's
Foundation of California, a group devoted to advancement of gender equality. The Bureau of
Labor Statistics said that in the decade between 2004 and 2014, women earned 80% to 83%
as much as men.

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The Pink Tax, so named because of the color of products directly marketed to girls and
women, refers to the price difference for female-specific products compared with the gender-
neutral goods or those marketed to men. And even though the issue has been around for
decades, it is still profound.

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In late 2015, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairspublished a

study comparing nearly 800 products from more than 90 brands, looking for price differences
in items marketed to different genders. On average, products for women or girls cost 7%
more than comparable products for men and boys. For example:

• Apparel. Girls' clothing cost 4% more than boys, and women's clothing cost 8% more than
men's. A side-by-side comparison of red, short-sleeve polo shirts used as uniforms showed a
$2 difference despite there being no obvious difference in style or quality. Both came from
the same retailer.
• Toys. Girls' toys and accessories cost an average of 7% more than boys' toys. Separately, a
side-by-side comparison of two Radio Flyer My 1st Scooters showed this: A red scooter cost
$24.99 and a pink scooter cost $49, despite them being identical in all other ways.

• Personal care. Women's personal care products also cost 13% more than men's, according to
the department's study.

Normally, consumers look to supply and demand to remedy inequities. If prices get to high
on a product or service, someone finds out how to provide it cheaper. But "not all markets are
perfect," said Michael Cone, a customs attorney who filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of
International Trade in 2007 that raised the broader question of whether different tariff rates
for men's and women's apparel violate constitutional equal protection provisions. The case
was dismissed, but discussion around the issue goes on.

There can be reasons to explain the differences. Service providers say that women's dry
cleaning and haircuts tend to be more labor and time intensive, which is why women are
willing to pay higher prices. Dry cleaners who use pressing machines, traditionally built for
men's shirts, need to hand press women's shirts, a more labor-intensive, and costly, process.
Women's often smaller and tapered clothes are typically not suited for these machines.
Unisex machines exist at half the price of man-sized machines, but press fewer items of
clothing per hour.

Ted Potrikus, CEO of the Retail Council of New York State, a statewide retail trade
association, looks to different points along the supply chain that may explain price
differences for seemingly identical products.

"Retailers see women as their biggest target," said Potrikus. "Research and development,
following trends, meeting trends, advertising products on television and in magazines are not
cheap." Companies are willing to spend more money advertising to women than they are
toward men, contributing to the price discrepancies."

But some don't see marketing costs as a big factor. "Advertising that doesn't talk up the
product but tells you you'll be prettier and more successful is emotional advertising," said
Cone. "It creates insecurities and jacks up the price."

Watch: Women gather for International Women's Day

The 'Woman Tax': How Gendered Pricing
Costs Women Almost $1,400 A Year
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LearnVest , CONTRIBUTOR

LearnVest is a simple plan for your money. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

No one doubts that women spend more on certain

things than men when they have different needs.

Makeup. Hair products. Waxing. Gyno appointments.

But then there are the charges you don't see coming. Imagine $2 tacked onto
every errand you run. Two bucks is pretty inoffensive on its own, but as anyone
who has ever stuck to a budget knows, dollars add up quickly.

After reading in Marie Claire that dry cleaners charge more to clean a woman's
button-down shirt than a man's, a LearnVest editor tested it out herself by
visiting her local dry cleaner in New York City. Lo and behold, her plain shirt cost
$4 more than a man's would have, because "the machine couldn't fit shirts from a
smaller person."

California, the first state to ban gendered pricing in 1996, found that, on average,
women spent an extra $1,351 per year in these extra costs and fees.

We like being women. We just don't like being charged for the privilege.
So what exactly are these costs, and how can we opt out of the "woman tax"?
We'll tell you.

At the Drugstore ...

In 2010, Consumer Reports found that equivalent products in a drugstore, like

deodorant or shampoo, cost more if they were marketed to women. They asked
the manufacturers why and almost across the board, the companies said it was
more expensive to manufacture products for women.

"They are completely different formulations," said one spokesperson of two

antiperspirants with the exact same percentages of the exact same ingredients.
Representatives of the offending companies also cited differences in packaging
and foaming action (which women apparently requested) as reasons for
disparate pricing.

A study from the University of Central Florida drew similar conclusions. It found
that on average, women's deodorants were priced 30 cents higher than men's,
when "the only discernible difference was scent." It's a similar case for most
products marketed to women, such as razors and shampoo, which smell different
and look different but at the end of the day serve the same purpose as scent-less,
glitter-less versions. (Learn how to save on beauty products in our Priceless Style
Bootcamp.)

On Anything Imported

Part of the reason this happens is because products for women cost more from
the get-go, starting when they enter the United States. Marie Claire tells the
story of a trade lawyer named Michael Cone, who was sifting through the list of
tariffs (fees the U.S. charges to import goods from other countries) and noticed
something incredible: The tariffs differed across gender lines.

For example, men's sneakers were taxed at 8.5%, while women's were taxed at
10%. Not every garment tariff he discovered was in favor of men, but he did find
that women were susceptible to higher taxes on those goods imported to the
U.S. at the highest volume. While there is no legal loophole or ostensible reason
for the discrepancy, Marie Claire points out that there's a history of bias in tariffs-
-before the Civil War, it cost less to import cheap wool so slaveowners could
clothe their slaves. At this point, inequality in tariffs is just the way it has always
been.