Taxing Gender

Gender-based price marketing is detrimental to women and leads to even deeper wealth inequalities. Photo by Ken Teegardin.

March 15, 2022, marked the 26th annual Equal Pay Day in the United States. Yet women, on average, still make less than their male counterparts, earning around 83 cents for every dollar a man makes. Although the wage gap has decreased by nearly 23 cents over the past 50 years, there are still significant inequities in pay between the genders. In 2019, the average woman made $10,000 less than the average man annually, and this disparity reaches even more disproportionate levels for women of color. In addition to facing wealth inequality in the workplace, women often face additional inequity as consumers, especially due to the “pink tax” phenomenon.

The pink tax refers to the fact that products marketed to women are often more expensive than comparable products marketed to men. However, these products are separated by purely cosmetic differences. Until a 1994 report from California’s Assembly Office of Research noted that “64% of stores in several major cities charged more to wash and dry clean a woman’s blouse than a man’s button-up,” the pink tax was rarely discussed. Unlike the period or tampon tax, which are actual taxes on feminine products, the pink tax is not an official tax. Instead, it is solely a corporate upcharge designed to take advantage of users of feminine-appearing products. In 2015, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs analyzed nearly 800 products across 35 product categories in five industries to study this phenomenon. They ultimately found that products marketed to women were more expensive than men’s 42% of the time, while products marketed towards men were more expensive only 18% of the time.

Frequency at which women pay more for comparable products versus men. Figure by NYC Consumer Affairs.

The pink tax not only affects feminine hygiene products, but also girls’ and womens’ clothing and even gendered children’s toys. On average, children’s and adult women’s clothes are 4% and 8% more expensive, respectively. A study performed on 50 popular kids’ products at six online retailers, such as Amazon, Walmart, and Target, found that the items colored pink were, on average, priced 2-15% higher than non-pink items. Comparable toys marketed towards girls are on average 7% more expensive than those marketed towards boys and cost more in 55% of cases. As for clothing, in 2014, consumers found that Old Navy had been charging $12-15 more for plus-sized women’s jeans than regular-sized jeans, whereas there was no price change separating men’s plus-size and regular-size jeans. Not only is this sexist discrimination, but sizeist bias as well. 

Moreover, clothing marketed towards women costs more than men’s in six of seven categories, ranging from dress pants to socks. The only one of these seven categories in which men paid more than women is underwear, which is on average 29% more expensive than comparable women’s underwear. Yet, the price difference in the other six categories produces an average total price that is 8% higher for items marketed towards women than men. The pink tax is clearly an all-encompassing issue that extends across multiple industries with one goal in mind: upcharging users of feminine-appearing products.

Difference in prices between men’s and women’s clothing. Chart by NYC Consumer Affairs.

Lawmakers have been attempting to address the pink tax for nearly 30 years. In 1996, the first piece of anti-pink tax legislation was implemented in the form of the Gender Tax Repeal Act (GTRA) of 1995. The GTRA is a California state law that prohibits merchants from charging men and women different prices for a service that takes the same amount of time, skill, and effort. Furthermore, in 2020, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a budget bill that banned gender-based price discrimination in services. While these state laws attempt to combat the pink tax, they fail to eliminate it. Both of these laws exclusively address disparities in services, rather than products, allowing the pink tax to continue undeterred. The California legislature attempted to pass a product-focused anti-pink tax law in 1994, but the governor vetoed it, leaving the pink tax untouched. Congresswoman Jackie Speier, the sponsor of the original Gender Tax Repeal Act of 1995, has also headed efforts at the federal level. In 2016, she sponsored H.R.5686, the Pink Tax Repeal Act, but it was struck down. Since then, the bill has been reintroduced in multiple different forms and repeatedly shot down until April 2019, when Representative Speier reintroduced the bill to the House of Representatives. It has since been referred to the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce.

While multiple states have begun efforts to ban or have already banned the tampon tax, they have neglected a massive amount of products and services that are upcharged merely based on the gender they are marketed to. The pink tax is not a legitimate tax. Instead, it is a marketing ploy that forces users of items marketed towards women to pay more for products that have no non-cosmetic differences from masculine products. Gendered wealth inequality is thus perpetuated by a combination of the wage gap, the tampon tax, and the pink tax. The wage gap creates an initial wealth inequality between men and women. The tampon tax then accentuates this financial disparity by taxing menstrual products, making female, gender non-conforming, or transgender consumers pay more for basic necessities. Finally, the pink tax causes users of products marketed towards women to pay more for items that are only superficially different from items marketed toward men. Each example disproportionately affects women and other gender minorities, causing an excessive wealth disparity between these groups and men. To specifically combat the pink tax, one can purchase men’s products that are virtually the same as women’s products, or advocate for legislation such as Representative Speier’s Pink Tax Repeal Act and pressure corporations to ignore the market standard and support a system of equality. The pink tax is a major issue and must be confronted along with the wage gap and the tampon tax to ensure financial equality for women and gender minorities, whether they find themselves in the workforce or the marketplace. 

Maxwell Lurken-Tvrdik (CC ‘25) is a Norwegian-Bohemian staff writer hailing from Freeport, Minnesota who plans on double majoring in sociology and human rights.