Pink tax

Feminine hygiene products in a store

The pink tax is a phenomenon often attributed as a form of gender-based price discrimination, with the name stemming from the observation that many of the affected products are pink. Products marketed specifically toward women are generally more expensive than those marketed for men, despite either gender's choice to purchase either product. The NYC Department of Consumer Affairs conducted a study that concludes that women's products are typically more expensive than men's for often reasonable cause. There are many causes of this discrepancy, including the tampon tax, product differentiation, and the belief that women are less price elastic than men.

Products marketed specifically toward women cost on average 7% more than products marketed toward men, according to a New York City Department of Consumer Affairs study. This discrepancy applies to apparel, toys, and healthcare products, among other things. In the toy sector, girls' toys cost on average 7% more than boys' toys. The study talked about a side-by-side comparison of a Radio Flyer scooter where the red scooter costs $24.99 and a pink scooter, identical in all ways but color, costs $49. In children's apparel, girls' clothes were 4% more expensive than boys'. Men's clothing was 8% less expensive than women's clothes. The largest discrepancy came to personal care/hygiene products, where women's products cost 13% more than men's. The study found women's products often being smaller in volume.

Causes

There are many reasons why the pink tax exists, including tariffs, product discrimination, and product differentiation. Clothing made for women and men are taxed at different levels when first entering the United States. While some tariffs are higher for men's clothing, others are higher for women's. In 2018, clothing companies sought to get tariffs on clothing removed. Their reasoning suggested these tariffs, while enlarging the gender gap, also put clothing companies at a disadvantage when operating overseas, but only in certain types of clothing. They maintained that those tariffs hurt the clothing industry.

Product differentiation can account for a portion of the difference between prices of men's goods and women's goods. Products like the Radio Flyer scooter may cost more due to the cost of slightly changing the product. For example, a pink scooter may cost more than a red scooter because it is more expensive to paint a scooter pink than red- assumedly, such a large difference for this reason of production would be because the red scooters are the larger production, and pink scooters are in the minority. They may also be seen as more of a "special edition", like camo-print trampolines. This also applies to services like haircuts or dry cleaning. Oftentimes, women's haircuts cost more than men's. Salons say that, because women's haircuts can involve more time and are labor-intensive than men's, they need to price haircuts for women higher than for men. In dry cleaning, men's clothing tends to be more uniform, women's clothing has a lot of variability which can make it harder to clean. Women's clothes are often smaller and more tapered, which means they are not suited for pressing machines at the dry cleaners.

The reason those who campaign against the pink tax claim it to be so problematic is alleged product discrimination. Critics say women's and men's razors are essentially the same and distinguishing between them is simply a marketing strategy. While the physical difference between a men's razor and a women's razor is minimal, the difference in marketing those products is large. Marketers have found that women are less price sensitive than men, meaning that they are generally willing to pay higher prices for goods than men. Other examples of marketers acting on price discrimination are student or senior discounts, allowing people who are more sensitive to price to pay less in order to gain their business. Airline ticket prices in advance compared to last-minute prices are another example. People who have a greater need to buy a product are often willing to pay much more, leading to price discrimination. Women are often subjected to this in the tampon and sanitary napkin market. These are products that women absolutely must buy, so they can be priced as high as a marketer would want and they would still sell their entire product. To marketers, women are less price elastic, meaning they care less about the price of a product or service. Manufacturers and marketers exploit this, resulting in prices of women's goods and services being higher.

Tampon tax

In the US, there is no specialized tax on tampons. In states where sales taxes are collected, tampons are taxed in much the same way as most other non-exempt items (such as toilet paper and toothpaste). There has been a recent push to carve out a special tax-exempt status for tampons. The tampon tax has sometimes been falsely called a "luxury tax". As of 2018, 36 states collect sales tax from tampons. Women leading the movement against the tampon tax are calling the tax a form of "regulatory discrimination", saying that menstruation is out of their control and that the government should not tax something that is imminent for approximately half the population. Unlike condoms, tampons are a necessity, with no male equivalent, so the two items cannot be compared. Furthermore, many schools, colleges, doctors offices, and clinics all offer free condoms for use by the public, while the same is not done for menstrual products.

Australia, Canada, and Britain have voted on legislation to create special tax exemptions for tampons, but none have become law. India has recently scrapped tampon tax. Kenya has removed the tampon tax and is now providing menstrual products to school-aged girls.

Economic impact

The economic impact of the pink tax is that women have less buying power, especially paired with the gender-based pay gap. Buying power relates to the amount of goods and services a person can buy, given current prices and available income to spend. The wage gap already puts women at a disadvantage when it comes to buying power. Women currently make a statistical average 89 cents for every $1 a man earns in the United States, meaning women statistically, on average, have less income to spend on goods and services. This alone gives men more money and, ultimately, more buying power. The pink tax further contributes to the economic inequality between men and women. Paying more for goods just because they are marketed to women when women already earn less than men means men hold the majority of the buying power in the economy. Taxes on feminine hygiene products that men don't have to buy further contributes to this discrepancy.

Legislation

Congresswoman Jackie Speier

Representative Jackie Speier was a member of the California state Senate from 1998-2006. In 2008 she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing California's 14th Electoral District, which includes most of San Mateo County and part of San Francisco County. She has held her position in Congress. Speier, a Democrat, is a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. In 2018, she introduced H.R. 5464, the Pink Tax Repeal Act, to end gender-based discrimination in the pricing of goods and services. This followed her introduction of an earlier version of the bill two years earlier.

Pink Tax Repeal Act

On July 8, 2016, Speier introduced H.R. 5686, Pink Tax Repeal Act, to the House floor. She was the bill's primary sponsor. This was widely considered an early version of the bill. It was been revised and edited over the succeeding two years.

On April 10, 2018 Speier introduced a revised version of the Pink Tax Repeal Act, H.R.5464. The 115th Congress (2017-2018) was expected to review the acts's 2018 version. Skopos Labs, a technology company that predicts risks and opportunities, gave the bill a 1% chance of being enacted. The overall intention of the Pink Tax Repeal Act is to end gender-based price discrimination. To accomplish this, the Pink Tax Repeal Act would mandate that any comparable products that are marketed toward men and women must be priced equally. Although Speier said she did not expect the bill to pass, she still tried to push forward the conversation about gender-based price discrimination in goods and services.

Gender Tax Repeal Act

While in the California state Assembly, Speier introduced Assembly Bill No. 1088, also known as the Gender Tax Repeal Act, in 1995. It was similar to the Pink Tax Repeal Act, except it focused on gender-based price discrimination in services. The bill stated that businesses such as tailors, barbers, hair stylists, dry cleaners and laundries would not be permitted to discriminate for "standard services" due to a person’s gender or the gender the clothing is intended for, without a valid, prominently placed written justification. The bill passed and remains in effect. A similar bill was proposed soon after aimed at consumer goods, however it gained large opposition from manufacturing companies. The main opposition argument was that a bill proposed on goods would lead to litigation and price increases.

Senator Ben Hueso (D-San Diego)

California state Sen. Ben Hueso of San Diego proposed a new version of the Gender Tax Repeal Act, SB-899, in 2016, but withdrew the bill after pushback from industry lobbyists. It would have banned businesses in California from charging customers different prices for similar goods on the basis of gender.

Delegate Jennifer Boysko, (D-Fairfax)

Jennifer Boysko, a Democratic member of the Virginia state House of Delegates, in 2018 submitted HB 24, which would exempt menstrual supplies from sales and use taxes, in response to the Tampon Tax in Virginia.

Criticism

Criticism of the concept of a pink tax include the principle that the idea robs women of agency and choice by suggesting that women are so easily brainwashed by marketing that they are prevented from choosing the lesser priced but otherwise "identical" male-marketed alternative. If it were truly identical to the female-marketed variety, there would be no reason not to buy the cheaper variety. Instead, critics have attributed the pricing disparity to market forces, and stated that if women continue to buy a more expensive pink razor, it is because they see some utility or additional aesthetic that they are willing to pay for. That there are substantive differences in price indicates differences in marketability of different products, not necessarily a conspiracy against women.

Opposition to the Pink Tax Repeal Act, came from retailers and manufacturers of women's products and clothing. Their chief argument is that the Pink Tax Repeal Act would be difficult to enforce and lawsuits would follow. The difference between men's and women's products is not always easy to see, they argue, so removing the pink tax would be subjective. They also alleged that the bill was unfriendly to domestic manufacturing jobs and that lowering the prices for women's products could lead to employee layoffs.

Republican opposition for a recall of the tampon tax in Virginia argued that tax discrimination against products for women needed to be sorted out by changing the general tax code. They added that they supported the elimination of sales taxes overall. Another opposition argument was that only disease-preventing hygiene products should be exempt from Virginia's sales tax and that feminine hygiene products did not prevent disease.

The satirical card game Cards Against Humanity released a "For Her" edition of its base set (which is exactly the same as the original except with pink-colored packaging and a higher price) in 2017 as a satire of the pink tax, and in support of EMILY's List—a U.S. political action committee supporting female pro-choice Democratic candidates.