Born with a Price Tag: A look at gender related costs of living
After looking at a receipt from a recent purchase, Alderman Leslie Hairston uncovered an unpleasant truth: being a woman comes with a price.
Specifically, she saw there was a tax on tampons she bought. Shocked, she took action, moving legislation before the Chicago City Council to recategorize tampons under “medical necessities,” thus eliminating the sales tax on them.
“It was not fair, you don’t have an option of not having sanitary items,” Alderman Hairston said.
The cost of being a woman accumulates in multiple ways, ranging from gender pricing to tampon taxes. The tampon sales tax was eliminated in Illinois, but this is only a portion of the price tag of womanhood. Nationwide, there are proven price discrepancies between similar female and male items. Known as “pink taxes,” these price differences occur on items ranging from deodorant to children’s toys. While reform for gender pricing may not come through legislation, the progress begun with the tampon tax legislation marks how crucial of a conversation gender equity is.
The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs released a study on gender pricing in December 2015 that looked at the discrepancies in the pricing of similar male and female items in different five industries. In the areas of Toys and Accessories, Children’s Clothing, Adult Clothing, Personal Care Products, and Senior/Home Health Care Products, the study looked at 397 pairs of similar “female” and “male” items. The results found that 42% of the time women’s items cost more, 40% of the time men and women’s items were equal, and 18% of the time men’s items cost more. While this study focused on New York City specifically, the stores studied were national chains such as Target, The Children’s Place, Abercrombie, and Walgreens. Figure A demonstrates pricing differences in the Target off Howard Street in Evanston, IL.
No state has successfully passed legislation banning this type of discriminatory pricing, but states such as Illinois have made progress by eliminating the sales tax on tampons.
The price of being a woman doesn’t stop at tampon taxes, but that is where change has started. Hairston’s proposal was passed by the Chicago City Council on Mar. 16, 2016, and feminine products were redefined as “medical necessities” to make them exempt from the city sales tax, according to the Document Tracking Sheet from the Office of the City Clerk. Then, on Aug. 19, 2016, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner signed into law a bill that eliminated the state sales tax from tampons. But what does this progress signify for the future of women?
“I think that the fact that you talk about menstruation in public and in legislation, in a place of power that’s dominated by men, is a really big deal because menstruation is generally seen as a taboo,” said Katherine Sredl, Marketing and Clinical Professor at University Loyola Chicago.
Sen. Melinda Bush, sponsor of the measure to eliminate the tampon tax, worked the legislation by going from senator to senator and talking about feminine products. She explained to fellow senators how passing this bill was about so much more than tampons, sanitary napkins and menstrual cups: it was about the next step for women.
“I think [talking about menstruation] made them a little uncomfortable and a little more willing to listen,” Sen. Bush said. “It’s a symbolic piece of legislation about gender and equity and I think that really [rang] true to everyone that I talked to.”
The elimination of the tampon sales tax was a big step for Illinois, but the cost of being a woman extends beyond this sales tax. Gender pricing, also known as the pink tax, appears to be a tougher problem to tackle.
Brett Gordon, Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University, said gender pricing’s unfairness comes dominantly from the public perception of what is fair and what is not.
“Gender pricing is just one form of price discrimination. Charging different prices to different groups of people, whether based on gender, age, time of day, location, or other characteristics, allows the firms to increase their profits relative to setting a uniform price,” Gordon said. “However, there isn’t always a clear argument for why one particular case of price discrimination is “more fair” than another. For example, to me, different dry cleaning prices for men’s vs. women’s dress shirts seems unfair but giving senior citizens a discount on movie tickets seems reasonable.”
Sredl, however, sees gender pricing progress in the future. While she doesn’t believe legislation would happen quickly or effectively, she sees gender pricing changing as a result of consumer demand.
“It would be a cool stance for a company to take- especially like Proctor and Gamble who has already taken so many stands on norms of beauty and what it means to be a girl and female,” Sredl said.
One way legislation may be able to effect change, Sen. Bush believes, is in the services industry. She wants to look at the difference between male and female pricing for services such as dry cleaning.
“[Gender] pricing is a way to make additional profits and I understand that retailers need to do that- but not on women’s backs,” Sen. Bush said.
Skimming through the women’s section at Target, Yazmin Urrutia, 25, explained that when her partner goes into the men’s section to get clothing, she sees the cheaper price and ends up buying from the men’s section as well. She hopes to see change in the future from companies equalizing their prices.
“Men don’t have to go through this everyday so they don’t really care about it or see it in that way,” Urrutia said.
Sredl explained that what she desires most from companies is transparency. “There’s nothing wrong with making things that are for women,” Sredl said. “We should hold marketers responsible for reproducing social norms that produce inequalities.”