Categorising things based on gender is a common phenomenon and we’re all aware of it. In fact, the differences are drilled into us starting from a very young age. We make a conscious effort to buy ‘blue’ for boys and ‘pink’ for girls.
That’s not all. If you walk into a store to shop, you’ll notice that most of the things in the women’s section will be priced higher than the things in the men’s section. The difference is due to gender-based pricing.
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The fault in our stars
Here are a few things that cost more for women, while men pay less for them.
Razors – Just because a company claims to design razors that glide smoothly over the ‘curves of a woman’, doesn’t mean that it should be priced higher. And who are they kidding? Razors made for women function exactly like those made for men.
The only discerning difference is in the colour. Those for men come in darker hues while the ones made for women come in soft pastels. After all, all women are damsels in distress who need to be protected from the menacing smile of dark-hued razors.
Jeans- Tell nobody, but the great price divide between two similar looking pairs of jeans is a mystery that even Hercule Poirot couldn’t solve. Nobody told him that one belonged to a man and the other to a woman.
Hair salons- No matter whether you want all the colours of the rainbow in your hair or just a simple trim, women almost always pay a premium for hair services. Go to the same salon and ask for the same stylist; women always have to pay more!
The disparity doesn’t end here. There are a lot of other examples from our daily life that can be quoted to highlight the issue of gender-based pricing. While much has been done to narrow the gender differences, gender-based pricing continues to be an issue.
Possible reasons behind gender-based pricing
No matter how much people object to gender-based pricing, the big conglomerates will always have a research and data-backed explanation to merit the pricing difference. Here are a few samples:
Willingness to pay
Generally, women have been found to be more willing to pay a higher price for things that a man would never buy at that price. Retailers take advantage of this and gain a good profit out of it too.
For instance, while buying a shampoo, a woman is more likely to explore various variants and choose the one that’d suit her hair type. She’s less likely to care about the price, as long as she gets the right variant.
Men, on the other hand, look for only one thing while buying a bottle of shampoo—it has to be shampoo! They care little about the variants and will most likely pick the one priced lowest. The quest for better variants, therefore, leads women into a trap of high-priced products.
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Different needs, different prices
The standard explanation that most salons give for charging women more than men is that most women have longer hair, and hence they need to put in that extra effort to trim it. Fair point. But they also blame it on the hair products. They say, since the hair products for women tend to be more expensive (again, thanks to gender-based pricing), women are charged more.
It’s high time that instead of justifying this price disparity, we start thinking of ways to eliminate it. You shouldn’t be asked to pay more just because it’s pink and not blue, right?
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Well, that’s something to ponder over. By no means should women be asked to pay more for the exact same things that men use too. Tell us what you think about this in the comments section below.
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