Pink Tax: How this pricing policy affects female-oriented products and services

Shivani Kava, Jun 29, 2021, 1:09 PM IST

Source: Unsplash

Have you ever noticed how some female products and services are more expensive than men’s?

This phenomenon is called the Pink Tax where prices change based on a person’s gender.

The color pink has, for a century now, become associated with girls and women. It has been used to reinforce certain stereotypes of femininity.

Danielle Kurtzlebenz says, “Think about it this way: you’re paying extra to play a made-up role that society pays you less for inhabiting.”

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, a lawyer, vice president for the Brennan School of Justice at NYU School of Law, asserts that it’s not actually a tax but “an income-generating scenario for private companies who found a way to make their product look either more directed to or more appropriate for the population and saw that as a moneymaker.”

For many,  Pink Tax may come off as a new woke term, but it is important to know that it is a global phenomenon.

A study titled, ‘From Cradle to Cane: The Cost of Being a Female Consumer,’ released by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, compares the prices of over 800 products which found that products for women cost 7 percent more than the same products made for men.

It was found that women pay at least twice as much as men in more than half the time they shop.

When it comes to India, there is not much data available to show the existence of the Pink Tax, which paves the way for the argument that it doesn’t exist in the country.

A report by Feminist India, says “it would be more apt to say that we do not have any Pink Tax levied on women products per se but we do have evident gender price discrimination in products and services.”

Not just products, even services catered to the female audiences will see a huge pricing variance.

As per Outlook India, there is glaring gender discrimination of pricing in services.

A report by Feminism in India states that the price of a normal haircut for men ranges from Rs 350-600 whereas for females it can start from Rs 600 and go upto Rs 1500.

How can the Pink Tax be avoided:

• Aggresive awareness campaigns.

• Buying unisex products over women’s products.

• Boycotting products that have gender discriminatory pricing