Gather round, you brilliant budgeting baby bears, while I ‘splain you one of the greatest economic injustices known to womankind. Yes, once again sexism is rearing its ugly head and unnecessarily cocking up our financial goals. Try not to act so surprised. Did you know that women pay more for imported products than men do? How …
What’s affected by the Pink Tax? Everything from personal hygiene products like shampoo and deodorant, to medicine like pain relievers, to services like dry cleaning, car maintenance, and hair cuts, according to a study by the University of Central Florida. Even more insidiously, import tariffs are higher for women’s products than for men’s. See, for example, lawyer Michael Cone’s fight to figure out why men’s imported sneakers are taxed at 8.5% while women’s are taxed at a whopping 10%. And it all starts at childhood: kids’ toys cost more when they’re pink than when they’re blue, which is quite literally a tax on the color pink.
Look! There’s even a whole Tumblr dedicated to documenting this injustice. And you know if something’s a Tumblr, it’s legit.
Sure, a dollar here and there tacked on to your weekly foraging errands doesn’t seem so bad. But it fucking adds up. According to Forbes, the unnecessary price gouging of gendered products costs women about $1,400 per year. That’s $1,400 per year womanly types could be socking away to save up for a down payment on a house, or putting toward their student loan debt, or using for Very Important Stuff, like cute holiday outfits for their dogs!
But instead it’s spent on the luxury of pink razorblades and deodorant that mercifully doesn’t smell like “Bearglove,” whatever the fuck that is, Old Spice.
READ ON!
