The pink tax reinforces gender inequality through pricing discrepancies between “women’s” and “men’s” products, and this primarily affects pink products. Examples of products affected include razors, toys targeted at girls, haircuts, clothes, calculators, even earplugs, etc. Unfortunately, the list goes on and on. Here are some examples of the pink tax so you can get an overall better picture of how absurd this phenomenon is:
- Scooters
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There is a whole $20 difference between these two products, even though they are literally the same and built the same.
- Razors
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Both of these razors are disposable and have a count of five, yet there is a 40 cent difference between the two products.
- Calculators
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As you can see, selecting the pink calculator adds on a dollar. The two products are exact replicates of each other besides the color, which should not add on a whole other dollar.
Thirty-three out of the fifty states still allows companies to impose this pink tax. Thankfully Governor Cuomo of New York banned the pink tax on September 30th. The justification used in the past for this pink tax is that women are willing to pay more for personal care products, so they should pay more. This reasoning is absolutely ridiculous, especially considering the gender wage gap. Big corporations justify the pink tax by stating they are using different materials for the products that cost more, although, in reality, the large price differences between these products do not make sense given the different materials being used does not cost more than the one being used in the cheaper product. Many states still have a lot of catching up to do in order to ban companies’ use of this discriminatory practice. There are many petitions you can sign to get rid of the pink tax in certain states! Hopefully if we all band together and advocate, the pink tax will eventually become eliminated in all fifty states.