The Pink Tax or Why We Need More Gender Neutral Consumer Products

Back when I was a child, everybody in my family used one and the same shampoo bottle. We also used the same bar of soap. Growing up, the first time I saw a TV commercial advertising separate shampoo “for him” and “for her,” I was puzzled. Why would men and women need different shampoo? We all have hair, and we all have to regularly wash it in order to keep it clean. It’s just hair and we all have it, so where’s the big difference between male and female hair? Growing up, I didn’t pay close attention to the shifting shampoo placement in stores. Thus I was unpleasantly surprised when I suddenly realized that shampoo, soap, deodorants, etc. products are now placed on separate shelves for men and women. How did that happen? Why didn’t I notice the shifting trend in product placement? More importantly, do men and women really need different and separate consumer products? And why do male and female products do not cost the same, why does gender-based price discrimination even exist?

Occasionally, having separate products makes sense. It’s reasonable to market menstrual pads and bras to women. After all, majority of guys don’t have breasts or periods. It’s also reasonable that underwear is shaped differently for people who either have or don’t have a penis. But more often than not, separate products simply do not make sense. More importantly, sometimes we cannot even honestly talk about “separate but equal” products, the prices being very far from “equal.”

Here, you can find an interesting study, called From Cradle to Cane: The Cost of Being a Female Consumer, which compares the price of analogous products marketed towards men and women. It’s published by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, but I suspect that the same trend exists also in other places. Researchers compared nearly 800 products (toys and accessories, children’s clothing, adult clothing, personal care products, and home health care products for seniors) with clear male and female versions from more than 90 brands sold at two dozen New York City retailers in order to estimate the price differences male and female shoppers face when buying the same types of items.

Lo and behold, there were differences; here are the findings:

On average, across all five industries, DCA found that women’s products cost 7 percent more than similar products for men. Specifically:

• 7 percent more for toys and accessories,
• 4 percent more for children’s clothing,
• 8 percent more for adult clothing,
• 13 percent more for personal care products,
• 8 percent more for senior/home health care products.

In all but five of the 35 product categories analyzed, products for female consumers were priced higher than those for male consumers. Across the sample, DCA found that women’s products cost more 42 percent of the time while men’s products cost more 18 percent of the time.

In every industry, products for female consumers were more likely to cost more. Specifically:

• Girls’ toys cost more 55 percent of the time, while boys’ toys cost more 8 percent of the time.
• Girls’ clothing cost more 26 percent of the time, while boys’ clothing cost more 7 percent of the time.
• Women’s clothing cost more 40 percent of the time, while men’s clothing cost more 32 percent of the time.
• Women’s personal care products cost more 56 percent of the time, while men’s products cost more 13 percent of the time.
• Senior home health care products cost more for women 45 percent of the time and cost more for men 13 percent of the time.

The findings of this study suggest women are paying thousands of dollars more over the course of their lives to purchase similar products as men. When comparing products from the same brand, in the same sizes, with the same active ingredients, you can spot the pink tax, because, apparently, pink is a luxury color. Obviously, there have been proposals to pass laws that would prohibit any business from charging a price for goods of a substantially similar or like kind on the basis of a person’s gender, one such example being the NY State Senate Bill S2679. Of course, I wholly support such laws, and I’d like to see them enacted. Unfortunately, there are two problems with waiting for politicians to fix this form of gender discrimination: (1) it’s going to take years for such laws to get passed, assuming it happens at all; (2) even if one country or region passes such laws, it won’t stop this discriminatory practice from continuing in the rest of the world. This brings up the following question: what can we, the consumers, do in the mean time while we wait for politicians to fix the problem of businesses charging a price for goods on the basis of gender?

Let’s start with analyzing the root cause for this problem. It’s obvious why businesses choose to market two separate versions of otherwise identical products to men and women—segmenting the market into narrow demographic groups allows selling more versions of the same thing. That’s how they increase profits. Why are retailers charging more for products targeted at women than those targeted at men? Apparently, because they can get away with it. Consumers seem to accept the prices, because it’s not always that simple to notice a price discrepancy. A lot of products are placed on separate shelves or in different isles. A person who is used to shopping in the women’s isle doesn’t always go to the men’s isle for the explicit purpose of comparing prices. We only look at our section of the store and ignore the shelves that aren’t obviously for us.

As you must have figured out by now, I intend to argue that we, the consumers, should just pick whichever product is cheaper regardless of whether it is marketed at our gender. In order to prove this point, I will explicitly compare various products aimed at men or women and discuss the differences between them.

As you will quickly notice, more often than not, the main difference between men’s and women’s products is the packaging. Advertising uses color, shape, texture, verbiage, logos, graphics, sound, and names to define the gender of a brand. Lighter colors, smoother edges, flower motives, and softer lines are for ladies. Darker colors, harder lines, square or angular shapes, and science-related pictures are for men. Various brand names explicitly mention the gender of intended consumers, for example, there’s “Broga” (yoga for men), “Brogurt” (yogurt for men), Brotox (Botox for men), Guyliner (men’s eyeliner), Mandles (candles for men). Besides the packaging and marketing, often there is no real difference whatsoever in the product itself. It’s the same product with the same active ingredients. Thus people, mostly women, lose money for no good reason whatsoever simply by shopping in the women’s isle.

Food

I will start with food, because that’s the most obvious—food is for humans, men and women do not need different food. We associate steak with men and salad with women only because of marketing. The idea that “yogurt is for women, fried chicken is for men” is the result of gender-oriented advertising with the same message being repeated to us for decades. According to advertisements, women are expected to get diabetes after binging on sugary pink yogurt, while men are expected to clog their arteries with all that meat they must consume with every meal or else they won’t appear manly enough to, err, somebody, presumably ladies who care about whether their boyfriend’s diet habits are manly enough. (Do I even need to add a sarcasm tag here? Of course, nobody is going to judge a guy for being insufficiently manly due to consuming too little meat or junk food.)

Gendering food is stupid, so why does it even happen? Marketing has taught us to establish our own identity though consuming certain goods or services. The idea is that a man is the hunter, the breadwinner, the meat eater, the fire-maker, the king of barbecues. Simultaneously, a woman is the gatherer of vegetables, the salad eater, the nurturer, the cupcake-maker. Does this even make sense in 21^st century? Of course not. Who said that marketing has to make sense.

But what if a man wants to eat yogurt? Or a woman wants to drink beer? Whoops, wrong question. Let’s rephrase that: What if some food company wants to expand their market and increase their bottom line by appealing to customers of the opposite gender? The only answer, at least according to countless brands and marketers, is to create a product so aggressively gendered, that there’s no question that it’s totally approved for either men’s or women’s consumption. Otherwise men won’t eat yogurt in fear that it will cause some gender-based allergic reaction, and women won’t drink beer in fear that even a single dose will make their bodies grow a penis.

Let’s look at a case study. Beer is usually marketed towards men. Sometimes the marketing is so heavily gendered that women may find the product repulsive. For example, Bud Light made the mistake of putting words “the perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night” on their beer bottles. If somebody wanted to sell alcohol to women, reminding them that consuming said product may increase their chances of getting raped is the wrong idea. So how do beer marketers try to appeal to women? By creating a ridiculously feminine-looking packaging. In my opinion, that’s the wrong approach. It would be better to just create more gender-neutral beer advertisements that can appeal to anybody regardless of their gender. After all, there do exist many women who love beer and are perfectly willing to drink it even without the pink packaging as long as the advertisements aren’t too sexist as to become repulsive.

This advert gives men a license to enjoy cooking and reassures them that doing so won’t undermine their masculinity. That’s all fine, baking a pie that contains meat is fine, doing so messily is also fine. As long as some person is enjoying cooking, it’s great regardless of what they cook or how. But why is there an expectation that a man shouldn’t be cooking cupcakes? And why can’t a male cooking enthusiast be skilled and able to do it neatly without making a mess? Unnecessarily gendered food is a bad idea, especially when one of the versions is more expensive than the other one. Gender shouldn’t be such a big deal when it comes to food.

Various Consumer Goods and Personal Hygiene Items

Lotion is lotion, shampoo is shampoo and shaving cream is shaving cream. Right? Marketing specialists would say “no,” but are we really going to trust them? After all, these people have a long track record of being less than trustworthy. Sure, there are his and hers products with packaging and product names that are targeted specifically for each gender with stereotypical ideas of masculinity and femininity. But are products themselves really substantially different (besides all the differences in marketing and packaging)?

Usually this is not the case. For example, let’s consider shampoo. There is no significant difference in ingredients. The active ingredient that gets your hair clean is usually sodium laureth sulfate (this is the most common option; of course a few shampoos have other active ingredients). The color or smell of men’s and women’s shampoo can be different, but that’s about it. If you don’t like the smell of some heavily perfumed men’s or women’s shampoo, there are plenty of brands that offer shampoo with little if any fragrance. A man or a woman who uses shampoo marketed for the other gender does not have to smell like they just escaped a perfume factory.

The only reason why shampoos, soap, lotions, shaving creams, deodorants, razors and other products are created in male and female variants is to help consumers create a relationship with the product. The company wants you to get emotionally attached to their brand, so they will market some product as being for “your type” of person, your psychological tribe.

Clothing

Now we finally get to the point where we can start discussing substantial differences between products marketed towards each gender. For food and personal hygiene items the main difference is usually the packaging and advertising rather than something more tangible and actually important for the customer. Men’s and women’s clothing, on the other hand, does differ. Sometimes.

Here are some photos I made for the purpose of illustrating the differences between typical male and female jackets. They look visually different. If a woman used men’s shampoo at home, nobody would notice without visiting her and taking a look at her bathroom shelves. If she wore male clothing in public, some people would notice the difference. I say “some,” because I have been wearing male clothes for years, and my own mother still haven’t figured it out. The thing is that while some male and female garments (like business jackets shown in these photos) do have significant visual differences, others look pretty much the same.

Here’s a scarf I own. Is it men’s or women’s? I purchased it in Frankfurt, at the men’s section of a store. The catch is that at the same store they had another extremely similar scarf for women. Women’s version was the same color, same pattern, even approximately the same size. The only difference was that the men’s scarf was 100% cashmere. Women’s scarf was 100% acrylic. This time women’s scarf was cheaper, but, given the superior material, I consider men’s version the better deal.

Let’s try again. Can you tell whether I am wearing male or female clothing in this vacation photo? Here my T-shirt, pants, shoes, even socks are all purchased in men’s clothing stores. Could you tell that? Probably no. When it comes to more formal attire like business suits, there really are easily noticeable visual differences between male and female clothing, but when it comes to more casual or athletic garments, often they are pretty much the same. Men’s and women’s T-shirts are often identical. Running shoes, unless they are pink and covered with glitter, might as well be considered unisex. Never mind socks, which are, well, just socks.

Here’s a photo I took in a store selling men’s and women’s socks. Kudos for the same price, but the packaging seems silly to me. Both pairs of socks are identical. They are made from the same material (linen and cotton blend), they look the same, they are identical (yes, I double checked). Why do people perceive socks as an item that must be gendered? Because of differences in shoe size? Well, there are some women with large feet just like there are some men with small feet, so this explanation doesn’t hold water. Obviously, the real reason are silly cultural expectations, which demand that male and female clothes must be strictly separated even when they are literally the same.

Athletic socks are fun to analyze if you are in a mood for facepalming. Here are some hiking socks marketed towards men and women. Can you spot the differences between them? Yep, this time we have some minor palette swaps. This seller probably didn’t want to market an identical product to men and women, so they shoehorned some odd minor differences. Apparently, men need to wear hiking socks that are in a slightly different blue hue than the women’s version.

I am happy to say that occasionally brands that sell athletic apparel do the sensible thing and clearly market their garments as unisex. Here’s an example of exactly that. Does this down jacket looks like something that both men and women can wear? Of course it does. Which is why it is marketed towards both male and female hikers and mountaineers.

My point is that sometimes male and female clothes are pretty much the same. This is why I can recommend people to check out the other range and see for themselves, maybe they will find something cheaper or better fitting among the garments marketed for the opposite sex.

Assuming that your feet are large enough and you can find men’s socks that fit you, this time picking the men’s version of the product is the sensible thing to do regardless of whether you are male or female. Paying more just for the packaging is pointless when both products are literally identical.

There is one more advantage to wearing male clothes—they are cheaper to clean. At dry cleaners men’s shirts are usually laundered and machine-pressed. Women’s blouses are often dry-cleaned and hand-pressed. Charging more for dry cleaning a delicate garment with frills that must be hand-pressed is reasonable. After all, hand-pressing is more labor-intensive compared to using an industrial pressing machine. But the problem is that often enough male and female customers bring nearly-identical, 100 percent cotton button down shirts in comparable sizes and request the same service, namely laundering. In such cases it is unfair to charge more just because the customer is female. Not all women’s blouses are delicate and frilly, often they are pretty much the same as male business shirts.

Speaking of clothing and shoes in general, I have gotten the impression that often men’s products are better made and more durable, they are also made from better materials. I only have anecdotal evidence to support this claim, but I do believe that it’s happening. A few years ago, back when I wanted to buy business trousers, I combed multiple women’s clothing stores in Frankfurt in search for pants that were made from wool rather than polyester. After hours of search, I did find one pair of wool women’s pants, but finding those pants was no easy feat. Finding quality men’s trousers was much simpler in the exact same stores in Frankfurt. I have also gotten the impression that men’s shoes and boots tend to be made from better materials and are more durable. Of course, it depends on the brand—some brands do make men’s and women’s shoes that are about the same quality, but often enough this is not the case. Men’s shoes are made from leather rather than synthetic materials more often, their construction tends to be more durable and just better. I used to wear women’s clothing up until I was 23 years old. Nowadays I wear men’s clothes and shoes. Back when I made the switch, I was surprised by how much better all the male items were. I was used to polyester women’s blouses and trousers, so I was surprised to see how often men’s shirts were made from cotton and their business trousers were made from wool. I was used to flimsy women’s hoes made from synthetic leather, so I was delighted to see quality men’s shoes made from real leather.

I know that without statistical evidence anecdotes do not prove anything. I haven’t done any extensive research on the differences in quality between male and female clothing. I can only share my observations from shopping in both men’s and women’s departments of the same stores. Still, if anybody assumes that women’s clothing is more expensive due to better quality, then that’s definitely not the case.

Conclusions

The first conclusion is that gender-based price discrimination does exist. The second conclusion is that you don’t have to just accept it, instead you can just buy the cheaper version regardless of what your gender is. Before purchasing something, ask yourself, “Am I buying this just because it says it is for my gender?” You can compare products and check out the other half of the range. Do you really need your shampoo bottle to inform you that it is intended for your gender? At least I sure don’t need marketing to reassure me that some product is, indeed, intended for my gender. More importantly, I refuse to pay extra for said reassurances.

“Just buy the cheaper version” is what I’d like to say. Unfortunately, it can be more complicated than that. There is a social stigma associated with buying and using a product that is intended for the other gender. The word “transvestite” has some negative connotations attached to it. People who actually are transgender get discriminated and abused on a regular basis. People fear that getting caught using the wrong product can result in others incorrectly assuming that they must be gay or lesbian. Marketing specialists have spent billions of dollars on enforcing the idea that a person’s gender identity must be tied to whatever products they consume. Thus consumers are reluctant or even afraid to use a product that’s intended for the other gender as if using a women’s shampoo could make a man too feminine (or vice versa—a man’s shampoo make a woman more masculine).

This Dove men’s shampoo advertisement was meant to be funny, but I perceive its message as pretty awful—if a guy uses a women’s shampoo, his coworkers will notice it and start questioning his gender identity and condemn him for, gasp, using the wrong shampoo. (By the way, in this commercial I actually liked better the way how this actor looked with long hair. Long-haired men are sexy.)

Some years ago, back when I realized that I don’t want to live as a woman, at first I felt immensely insecure about shopping in the men’s isle. The first men’s item I bought was a bag that I purchased online—I was too self-conscious and ashamed to enter a brick-and-mortar store and be seen buying men’s items there. When I was purchasing my first pair of men’s shoes, I felt very uncomfortable and nervous. I was forced to overcome my fear of social condemnation, because I didn’t want to buy shoes online without trying them on first.

By now I have spent several years shopping in the men’s isles. I want to reassure others and emphasize that it’s nowhere near as bad as I had feared. I haven’t experienced any uncomfortable social interactions while shopping for male consumer goods, nor has anyone ever asked me about what shampoo I use. Even wearing noticeably male clothes haven’t resulted in social condemnation. Shop assistants simply do not care what I buy. Their job is to sell stuff, and they will gladly sell me anything. People I meet in my daily life do not seem bothered by my utter lack of femininity either—my friends care about me as a person and they don’t worry about my fashion preferences, and strangers are too preoccupied with their own daily lives to bother paying much attention to some random person they met somewhere. It’s okay to use consumer goods marketed for the other gender. Unless you live in some very conservative region, there probably will be no social condemnation.

I have seen some apologists for gender-based price discrimination. Their argument is just a form of some good old victim blaming: “Women themselves are to blame for female products being more expensive. Nobody is forcing women to buy female products, instead they should vote with their wallets and pick the cheaper men’s version. The fact that women choose more expensive products against their own best financial interests means that women find some discernible appeal in the women’s products—be that different ingredients, cosmetic factors, or whatever else—that make them worth paying more for. Thus the existing price discrepancy is justified.” It’s incredible how oblivious some people can be to some good old social pressure. First the society pressures people to buy products marketed to their gender, next the same society blames individuals for not picking the cheaper option.

Overall, I don’t mind that businesses offer for sale pink pens, phones, or laptops. After all, there are people who like pink color. I’m not raging against the fact that consumers are given various different color options. I’m only objecting to the way how it is done. Here’s how to fix the problem: (1) the pink version of some product must cost the same as the more gender neutral version; (2) the pink product shouldn’t be labelled as “for her,” “women’s,” “lady’s,” etc. Some people like pink color, flower ornaments, and rounded shapes. Among those people are also some men and boys. People who like this aesthetic already know their visual preferences, and they will buy the pink pen even if the packaging doesn’t explicitly reassure the buyer that this product is intended exclusively for one gender only. There’s nothing wrong with a man using a pink pen, so just drop the words “for her.”

Moreover, I do not object to businesses charging various prices for products or services that actually have sufficient differences between them. For example, let’s consider haircuts. It is reasonable to charge more for an elaborate haircut than for a very simple and plain one. After all, the fancy haircut is more time-consuming for the hair stylist to make. Simultaneously, it is very wrong to demand that women pay more just because of being female. Some men have long hair, some men want fancy haircuts. Similarly, some women have short hair and they ask for simple haircuts. Price differences are acceptable only when the product or service that men or women get is sufficiently different.