Growing up always having the toys, legos, and pencil cases geared towards girls and now the deodorant, razors, and shampoo packaged just for women I never realized how much more money my parents were spending just for it to be “pink.” Prejudice pricing is just another avenue for gender discrimination, and it causes women to pay $1,351 more per year. The pink tax is an unjust gender based pricing system on women’s products. Though this is not a technical government tax, items in stores cost more money when they are “made for women.” An example of this is the price of a women’s first aid kit on Amazon, that is pink, outshines the price of blue or red ones tailored for anyone. The funny thing is, these first aid kits include the same supplies. Nothing different.
Every store is suspected of having unfair prices. Take Target for example. Children’s toys, excluding stereotypical ones such as dolls and Barbie’s, cost 5% more. Take for example, two helmets for bike riding that are for sale. The blue helmet is $14.99 and a pink helmet is $15.75. The pricing doesn’t make any sense since both hold to the same standard and the only thing separating them is their color. Parents have noticed these disadvantaged rates as well. Other examples included roller skates, blankets, raincoats, mega blocks, pacifiers, headphones, and calculators.
Shampoo, toothbrushes, deodorant, and even soap are susceptible to the pink tax. Articles like these are used regardless of gender. Toiletries cost women close to 13% more than products geared towards men. Disposable razors marketed for women even cost more than the Bic ones marketed for men. Toothbrushes are another peculiar toiletry that are affected by the pink tax. One bizarre example is laxatives. Drug stores such as CVS sell laxatives sold for women labeled “Dulcolax Pink” that sit on the shelf next to the regular “Dulcolax” in green packaging. The pink package’s price is higher than the green’s. Both products do the exact same thing. Another random product that can be sold to either gender, where it doesn’t make any sense there is a difference in pricing and marketing, are earplugs. The earplugs used for blocking out sounds on planes, sleeping, etc are sold at drug stores in pink containers with the words “Women’s Earplugs” on them being sold for $1 or $2 more than the generic ones next to them. I can’t imagine that once everyone is aware this is going on it can continue much longer. There is no reason girls can’t use men’s shaving cream and razors to finesse this system.
In spite of it all, some women will still pay more for fragrances and packaging. Feminine toiletries and toys are more preferred as well. Some large corporations claim the pink tax is indispensable at the moment because it is important for researching more products geared towards women. Nevertheless, marketing more products too. Except, this doesn’t make much sense because both men and women often buy the same regular day-to-day products. So, claiming to research and market certain products just to price them higher isn’t reasonable. This tax is creating another gender barrier. The excuses for the reasons the pink tax is still functioning are preposterous.
Ultimately, the pink tax isn’t a reasonable toll. Already, women aren’t being paid as much as men. So to have girls pay more money for products “made just for them” that sit next to regular ones, which quite frankly is slightly insulting, isn’t fair. The pink tax has been around for many years, let’s hope it doesn’t last much longer.
