This is something I have spoken about a lot on this blog, my views on the 'gender tax.'
While the report talks about the quiet unfairness of a higher price for women's cosmetics and toiletries, it mentions nothing of advertising and marketing products to women. This is something I have complained about before on this blog that we are expected to buy twice the amount of products that men do and at high to insane prices.
But lets not touch on that today as I feel it might take the whole article to talk about it! I want to concentrate on the findings of this report from the New York Department of Consumer Affairs called: 'Cradle to the Cane : The Cost of being a Female Consumer.' This is their first report into gender pricing in stores. (Find the Irish Times article here)
I will also not be mentioning tampon tax in particular either as it is completely unfair but comes under personal care items in the report. I would presume that they would.
In researching this report, the department compared the prices of 800 products from 90 different brands to get the average discrepancies between male and female spending. They reckon that women come out over €1,000 worse off per year. When you consider that the wages for women can be lower then mens thanks to the wonderful world we live in - we are being taxed, priced and marketed to unfairly.
One of the widest areas of discrepancy was hair care. We all know that to get our hair cut as a female is a lot more expensive then mens but what I didn't realise is that our shampoos and conditioners can be priced unfairly with products aimed at women coming in 45% more expensive then mens! Also women's clothing came in at 8% more expensive then boys. Girls' clothing is also 4% higher then boys. Personal care items came in at 13% higher then boys personal care. I guess the higher percentage in that may have to do with tampons.
Again, why are we being taxed on those!?!?
So the Irish Times asked, could our women be paying more for things?
Yes.
This is where I feel sorry for Conor Pope. The writer of what was a good article. I just feel this article should have been written by a woman. None of us are surprised by this news. None of us are in any way shocked by it. Not one woman needs to go to Boots to compare razor blades like the Times did, because we know the outcome - we are ripped off daily.
I am sickened by the thought of being targeted for being female but I am not shocked. I am not going to say that anything will come of this article either. This report will get buried as most reports do and it won't mean a damn past content for some blogger like me or fashionista. I just wish women would get more upset then tweeting their disapproval.
In their article, the Times found that boots were offering shaving gel to men at €1.99 and women at the cheapest, €2.49 which is nuts. Also, Tesco offered brands like Just for Men hair dye at €7.65 and women's dye at €10.29. Although, I don't know what brand they were looking at because I would never pay €10 for dye! My home bleach kit was always around €7 per box. So if women got upset and demanded a better deal on their products then maybe we could get somewhere.
If we stopped buying primer because we aren't sure it works, stopped gender coding our stuff, our toys or protested the tampon tax - we could be better off by €1,000 per month.
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