@sherlockians-get-bored, thanks for asking!
1. They were not making a good point. They were simply marketing a product (and doing a great job of it too). Yes, Iâm being cynical about this, but itâs well justified here. CAH actually gendered a product unnecessarily, set a higher price for it, and now people are eating it up. They are literally profiting off of shared gullibility.
Listen, I donât mean to be insulting by this, by calling people gullible, but thatâs really what it is, and no one is immune to being gullible sometimes. This is a specific type of marketing, which panders to controversy or social issues, and presents pure marketing as if it were making a social statement when itâs actually not.
Businesses have a singular goal, and that goal is profit. Business arenât your friend. Businesses arenât looking out for you. Businesses do not make social statements unless there is profit to be made off of it, and thatâs what this is. CAH is profiting off of gullibility.
2. Gendered products exist for a reason: demand. Itâs really as simple as that. There is no conspiracy to make girls like one thing and boys another. Nor is there some overarching conspiracy to make expensive pink razors for women and less expensive razors for men.
Gendered products exist because men and women are inherently different in many ways, and companies want to cater to those differences in order to make a profit. In general, women prefer certain products, and men prefer slightly different products. In many cases, these differences in preference are nearly absolute because of biological differences. Women do not grow facial hair; men do not have breasts; women are shorter than men; men have bigger feet than women; men donât have periods; etc., etc. These are all generalities of course, but for 99% of the population itâs true, and the exceptions donât set the rules. (Sure, marketers influence purchases by influencing consumers some, but the overwhelming force is from consumers.)
Marketing products is really a process of trial and error. No one is forced to purchase anything. If individual consumers want to buy something they see, they will. If they donât want it, they wonât buy it. If they donât buy it, then the producer doesnât make any money, and the product dies and goes away. Producers will not sell products that no one wants to buy. This should be an obvious axiom of business.
Economists sometimes call purchases âdollar votesâ, because consumers are literally voting with their money for which products they want produced. That means that all of these gendered products on store shelves were voted on by consumers and the ones that survived the voting process âwon.â Of course, there will always be new and untested products on shelves, but they will quickly die if no one wants them.
3. Prices are set by market forces and not due to sexism. There is a popular notion (which CAH exploits here by charging $5 more) that women are forced to pay more for gendered products than men, but this is just an unfounded myth. In very specific cases, product comparisons can be made between menâs and womenâs versions of products, and prices can be higher for women. However, the same can also be done for other products where the menâs version is higher priced. The overwhelming problem with these comparisons is that inevitably they start out with the assumption that âwomen pay moreâ and then they go out and look for ways to prove it. This is just cherry-picking and confirmation bias. Any evidence to the contrary is immediately ignored.
Another issue with gendered product comparisons is that they inevitably ignore consumer choices. In many cases, women are literally choosing to pay more for something when they donât need to. If a particular womenâs razor is too expensive, then buy a cheaper one. The fact that premium womenâs razors even exist is a testament to the choices that women make. If women wanted a cheaper razor, they would buy a cheaper razor. If women wanted to go without makeup, theyâd go without makeup. If women wanted to wear virtually the same clothes everyday like men do, theyâd do it. The fact is that women and men have different desires and drives, which influence their purchasing behaviors.
Summary: Men and women behave differently when it comes to purchasing products, and producers seek to exploit those differences in order to generate profits. Sometimes producers go too far with gendering and make some silly products, which are unnecessarily gendered. Prices are set by market forces and not by some global conspiracy to force women to pay more. NaĂŻve people make assumptions about the way things work when they are inexperienced or uneducated about something. These assumptions give rise to popular myths or memes. Cards Against Humanity is now crassly profiting off of this meme.
