The "Pink Tax" starts from birth

[gollygee]

http://jezebel.com/bad-news-ladies-the-pink-tax-starts-at-birth-1784885725

It took me around 20 minutes to dig up multiple examples of a so-called “pink tax” in children’s toys—functionally identical items that are several dollars more when sold in the color pink versus the color blue. As of Friday, the Ty Tinker Blue Bear was $29.99, while the Ty Pudder Pink Bear was $34.99. Fisher-Price’s Power Wheels Jeep Wrangler in blue was $194.63, while the identical Barbie Jammer in pink was $214.88 (the blue car’s price has been raised slightly, but is still less than the pink car).

I’d also noted that this Schwinn was discounted to $70.38 from $79.99 in blue, but full price in pink. Those bikes are now priced identically at $79.99, and the same shift has occurred for the bears. The changes in price happened after I emailed Amazon and asked for comment on the price discrepancy; though there’s no indication that my poking at this issue is why there’s been a shift, the company did not respond to my request for comment.

The evidence for the “pink tax” even among girls and boys is more than anecdotal: A 2015 study conducted by New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs found that girl’s toys cost more 55 percent of the time, and that girl’s clothes cost more 26 percent of the time. General toys were found to cost around 11 percent more for girls than boys.

[shenmue]

1. Yeah

[Warpy]

2. It was that way in the 50s when I was a kid, too.

My play clothes were either homemade or for boys. My school clothes were homemade. The pink tax was incredible for childrens' clothing, even when it was identical except for which department store table it sat on.

As an adult, I've always had a deep aversion to the color pink. I know anything in that color will be seriously overpriced and I look for alternatives.

Oh, and my first bicycle was blue. My dad knew about it, too.

[lapucelle]

3. There were reports here in NY about the differencs in drycleaning costs

for women's blazers, shirts, slacks versus the same items for men. Women were charged more.

But I'm old enough to remember being told by my boss when I questioned why a male colleague doing the same job as me was hired at a higher salary, "He's a man."

[csziggy]

15. I had some men's shirts that I needed to get cleaned and pressed

One drycleaners had a deal for cleaning men's shirts so I went there. They quoted me a much higher price. When I questioned why they weren't honoring their sale, I was told it was because the shirts belonged to me, a woman. No matter how I argued that they were men's shirts and it didn't matter who owned them, the company would not give me the discount they would have given a man.

That incident made me decide to avoid buying clothing that needed to be dry cleaned. Almost everything I owned can be machine washed at home, most don't need ironing. That one company's choice to discriminate against a woman has cost the industry thousands of dollars in the last 45 years.

[MADem]

4. Dry cleaning--I guess they don't know how to "iron around the boobs" or something??

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/price-discrimination-gender-gap-cbs-news-undercover-dry-cleaners/

A study out last month by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs showed women may be paying more than men for virtually the same product. The report, "From Cradle to Cane: The Cost of Being a Female Consumer," compared nearly 800 items with clear male and female versions, and on average, the women's versions of a product cost seven percent more than the ones for men.

But price discrimination is not limited to retail, reports CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller.

CBS News went undercover with one female producer and one male producer visiting a handful of dry cleaners in New York City. They brought nearly-identical, 100 percent cotton button down shirts in comparable sizes and requested the same service.

Our female producer was charged at least twice as much in more than half the businesses visited. In one, she was charged $7.50 while her male counterpart just $2.85. At another, she paid $3 dollars more....

[BooScout]

38. I have walked out of Dry Cleaners that do this...

As long ago as the 80's I was objecting to this practice. I have walked out of Dry Cleaners that do it and told them in no uncertain terms why. I had one stupid clerk try and tell me it was because women's blouses were smaller and didn't fit as well on the 'pressers'.....when I started laughing at him, the manager came out and told me it was women's buttons were on the 'wrong' side.

[X_Digger]

5. For something like the 'power wheels', I'd imagine licensing costs differ.

I'm sure there is a 'pink tax', but in some cases, it might be justified due to the market or demand.

[niyad]

28. yep, right on schedule.

[X_Digger]

30. Do you assume that 'Barbie' branded toys cost the same to make as non-tie-in toys?

I used to work for a division of Mattel- (The Learning Company, which used to be Broderbund), and licensing was an absolute nightmare, even within the Mattel family; funny money had to change hands (from one budget line to another) just for us to produce software featuring Mattel properties.

'Barbie' stuff had an additional layer of approvals, from packaging, to design, to font, to specific CMYK colors.. it was an absolute mess.

[OnDoutside]

6. also happens with toiletries like shaving foam.. men's are

Cheaper.

[Warpy]

7. I always used the generic nurse's trick

which was soap foamed up with a little generic lotion like Eucerin. Worked for me and my patients.

[davidn3600]

8. Then just buy the men's foam

Is there really that much difference between mens and womens shaving foam? Now if the women's foam includes extra things like fragrances and moisturizers.....well, that's the reason for the price difference.

But even when you look at the ingredients and it's the same, the reason for a price difference is the marketing and advertising. In which case, just buy whatever is cheaper.

Now with clothes....that's a different ballgame. Men and women don't wear the same clothes and don't shop the same way at all either. So there is more to it with that department.

[raccoon]

39. That's what I've always done. About the shaving cream. nt

[angstlessk]

9. Same with razors..lady razors cost more than men's...I just used a man's razor...

and I wondered if I was shaving at all...was so smooth!

[Igel]

10. So does it start at wholesale or is a retail mark up?

Would they sell significantly more if they were the same (lower) price and make more money? In that case, you'd think they'd do that in a heartbeat.

Would sales of the men's product drop off if the prices were raised? Or would the result of lowering the women's products' prices just produce lower income with trivial increases in sales?

Where I worked we wholesaled hand-made soap and hand-dyed ribbon. It was trivially harder or more expensive to produce one kind of soap or ribbon than another. And yet there was a price difference. In some cases, the harder product (but one that was established and expected to be continued) was a bit more expensive but sold for less.


Still, it's true: If the men's product costs less, if the boy-targeted good is less expensive, buy the male's. But if the little girl refuses and wants the girl-oriented one, if the boy shrugs at and acquiesces to the parents' saying "too expensive, let's get this instead," then you have a reason that's both sex-based but non-discriminatory.

[niyad]

11. k and r and wait for the denial that such exists

[davidn3600]

12. It's just typical marketing segmentation

It's how they do marketing. They divide their customers into groups and they know how to market and target to make the most profit.

I dont think people say it doesn't exist. But what's happening is people selling this stuff have done the math and figured out how to make the most money.
Men and women do not shop the same way. Marketers and retailers realize that. So they segment the market so they can target men and women in different ways. And that can have a direct effect on demand, manufacturing, and the pricing of the product.

There is an incredibly easy way to defeat this....don't limit yourself to only one gender's stuff like we are trained to do.

This video explains the situation....

[PatSeg]

16. Thanks for posting the video

That was fascinating.

[Taitertots]

13. "Pink Tax" = Revealed Preference

The people who buy pink toys want them more. If they didn't, they wouldn't buy them at higher prices.

[Quantess]

14. Why buy into the assumption that girls need pink things?

Adults do the shopping, ultimately. Are adults so narrow-minded and uncreative that they all just go along with the silly pink-for-girls notion?

It could be the children themselves who insist on the color, but if so, they didn't come up with that idea on their own, and their parents probably do nothing to question it.

I was a little girl in the 70s and I admit the infantile pink-for-girls craze has become 10x worse since then.

My first bicycle was orange, my 2nd bike was purple. I thought they were both pretty. Pink was never my first choice.

[davidn3600]

20. It's actually interesting how marketing has created these social boundaries

There have actually been studies where psychologists have evaluated this. They have taken boys toys and put them in pink packaging. The toy itself is the same, they just changed the packaging. Suddenly boys in test groups start to avoid those toys because they assume, "it's for girls."

It's interesting to see that most boys won't even go down the pink aisle in a toy store. They avoid it like it's some kind of biohazard. Why is that? Boys were not born to have that reaction to the color pink (in fact pink was the boy's color 100 years ago). Likely parents or peers told them that aisle is "for girls." Girls get the same kind of treatment but are told to avoid the boys stuff. I knew someone that once worked in a toy store and told me every single day she would see parents that would steer their kid based on the perceived gender stereotypes of the toy. Girls were told to put down toys that were "for boys" and vice-versa for the boys. This all then carries on into adulthood, of course.

The packaging of a product plays an incredibly significant role in our decision to buy something. Entire product lines that were failing have been turned around just by changing the packaging. Retailers, manufacturers, and advertisers know this effect very well. Companies will spend large sums of money to research which packaging is best to target specific groups. And as consumers, we fall for this hook, line, and sinker.

An interesting article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/opinion/sunday/gender-based-toy-marketing-returns.html

[RobinA]

22. Pink

Many males seem to believe that proximity to anything pink or otherwise female will turn them gay, hence the biohazard reaction.

That said, and as a female who happens to have pink as a favorite color, the pinkification of everything is a bit much these days. Most stupidly - pink camo. If I were growing up today, I'm not sure pink would be my favorite.

And I do look twice at a guy who has the guts to wear a flowered tie under his gray suit.

[NickB79]

17. 100 years ago, pink was the color for boys and blue was the color for girls

http://www.npr.org/2014/04/01/297159948/girls-are-taught-to-think-pink-but-that-wasnt-always-so

Nearby at the exhibit is a pale pinkish-purple silk coat worn by a Frenchman in Louis XVI's court. Any woman would be tempted to swap her pink Nikes for this gorgeous long coat, embroidered with intricate flowers.

In A Journey Around My Room, published in 1794, French writer Xavier de Maistre puts pink into the male dream-space. He recommends that men have pink and white bedrooms to brighten their moods.

Fast-forward to 1925. Characters in The Great Gatsby speculate about Gatsby's past: "An Oxford man! ... Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit." A version of that pink suit is in the Boston show — Ralph Lauren designed it for Robert Redford in the 1974 movie.

Before Gatsby, a 1918 trade catalog for children's clothing recommended blue for girls. The reasoning at the time was that it's a "much more delicate and dainty tone," Finamore says. Pink was recommended for boys "because it's a stronger and more passionate color, and because it's actually derived from red."

[ismnotwasm]

18. K&R

[Marr]

19. Girls can only buy the pink toys, of course.

And the pink toys are cheaper if boys buy them.



Sorry, but this is marketing, not sexist oppression. They've determined they can sell the pink versions at a premium, so they'll do it.

[Odin2005]

24. "pink = girly" is itself a creation of marketing.

Pink was traditionally a masculine color, there is nothing inhierently "feminine" about the color pink. Maintaining traditional gender roles to create market segmentation is profitable.

[Chisox08]

21. Some of these price differences can be explained

Let's start with the Power Wheels, the extra cost is in the Barbie branding. Back when I worked at Toy's R Us we had three Escalade Power Wheels that were black, white and the pink Barbie. The pink Barbie was always $50 more than the plain black and white Escalades until the barbie branding was dropped from it and the price evened out.
The Schwinn in blue and red is unisex, the box shows a boy and a girl riding the scooter, only the pink one is labeled for girls and features two different girls on the box. When we got the blue scooters in we got 4 of them for ever pink scooter so we often had more blue ones in then we needed and they went on sale more often to clear space.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

27. Could at least some of that fifty dollar price difference

have been a licensing fee paid to the Barbie people, the company that owns that brand?

[Chisox08]

36. That is what I was saying.

That Barbie license fee is expensive.

[Odin2005]

23. I think the role of Capitalist marketing greed in maintaining sexism and traditional gender roles...

...is often overlooked. Under late-stage Capitalism EVERYTHING is commercialized.

[The2ndWheel]

25. It's up to the customer to buy what they want

If someone can sell you one thing at one price, and the same thing in a different color at a higher price, and you buy the higher priced item, that's on you. Enough people do it that these companies keep doing it. If more people stopped buying the pink stuff because it's pink, eventually they'll lower the price just to get rid of it. Or they'll stop selling it altogether.

[JonathanRackham]

26. An eye opening thread.

Thanks all who contributed.

[procon]

29. Shoes are another example.

I was looking for just some everyday, walking around tennis shoes, and the girlie ones I liked had pink laces and trims and some sparkly bling, just too cute for $79. For boys, a similar shoe in plain white was only $29. So I bought the boy's shoes, and are made sturdier and cut a bit wider for a better fit for me, anyway. Then I spent about $6-7 on some crafty extras to sex up my new shoes. Just by adding some pink shoelaces they looked pretty girlie, but with the help of a glue gun, I glamed 'em up even more with some rhinestones and mirrored shiny bits. Now I want to do the same thing for my granddaughter, and doll up some boy's shoes in her fave purple and sparkles.

[Stuart G]

31. First time I have heard of this...thanks for posting...k and r.

[niyad]

33. the pink tax has been known for quite a long time (just like "pink collar workers")

and is vehemently denied or excused by many.

[lumberjack_jeff]

32. Then buy blue stuff. n/t

[niyad]

34. and, right on schedule.

[niyad]

35. from the pink tax to the pink collar workers to the pink collar ghetto.. . .the sexism

just goes on and on and . . . . .

[davidn3600]

42. It all evens out in the end anyway. Men have to pay for dinner and the movie.

Dinner, movie, flowers, chocolates, the engagement ring, etc, etc...

That stuff ain't cheap.

[JI7]

37. and idiot parents who insist their kid only get the toy for their gender

i notice this a lot where parents will tell the boy he can't have that because it's for girls. or try to push the girl towards the "girls toys" when she is looking at cars and action figures.

[Orrex]

40. Gendered ear plugs

"Hearos" vs. "Sleep Pretty in Pink"

$0.50 more for the functionally identical pink product, also marketed as a sleep aid because no woman on Earth could ever undertake actual work requiring actual hearing protection.

And even if they did, they'd want to be pretty while doing it, of course.

[ProfessorGAC]

41. Quite The Marketing Racket

It's actually perversely impressive how they have managed to market the notion that the exact same toy can be gender specific.

Even the whole Barbie phenomenon is strictly marketing. Then on top of that, it adds to gender specificity on a little electric scooter. Marketing on top of marketing.

And yet, the consumer seems to buy into it.