While shopping with a friend the other day at a sporting goods store, we came across a phenomenon that I wish I had realized was such a severe issue earlier. We found a Nike brand hoodie, women’s, priced at the classic Nike logo price of $60. We quickly returned it to the rack wondering why we would spend that much on a simple sweatshirt. A few minutes later, we found ourselves perusing the men’s section of the store, and to our surprise we found that same hoodie, in the same color, identical to the one we found in the women’s section, was a mere $45. At first we figured that this had to be a mistake, and so we made a game for the rest of the time in the store of comparing the prices of men’s and women’s comparable items, and we soon found that the pricing on those hoodies was no mistake after all, and spans much further than some simple sweatshirts.
United States Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New York brought this issue to Senate, and below are just a few of the examples she provided, urging individuals that more evidence is just a simple search on Amazon.com away (Source).
According to the National Joint Economic Committee, this is a well documented phenomenon in the United States, and has even earned a name, being called the “Pink Tax” (Source). The Pink Tax is a means by which companies market the exact same product to fit two different gender stereotypes, and in almost every single situation, charge more for the women’s version of the product. Shown below is a distribution of the average markup of products in a study conducted by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs.
Examples of these span an expansive list including clothing, hygiene products, and even foods. That is not to mention the price of feminine products, a costly investment that only women are forced to overpay for. Bankrate.com estimates that the Pink Tax costs each woman in the United States an average of $1,300 each year (Source). These economic trends are a direct reflection of societal norms and sexist standards around consumerism, and span across the nation, therefore making this yet another systemic injustice. It reinforces the fact that the color pink or other feminine details are a direct indication of being female, and ushers in different treatment and even pricing based upon these assumptions.