BOILING POINT

Walking into any retail store, it is clear to customers that there are two distinct sections.

One side embodies softness with its romantic, flowery and elegant themes and pastel packaging. The other side is hard-hitting with its masculine, outdoors and fierce themes and dark packaging.

BY MAYA CLEMENT Managing Editor

One clearly marketed for women and the other for men.

While these two sections may seem to sell similar products, they are not as alike as one may think. Yes, the items may mimic each other, but the prices and marketing do not.

Advertisements frequently rely on different tactics in order to reach their audience in the “best” way possible. Realistically, all these advertisements do is create a divide between women and men’s products, and set up a society where women and men are pushed into different boxes.

Aside from just looks, the products manufactured for women typically have higher prices than the same products manufactured for men. This anomaly is commonly referred to as the pink tax.

The pink tax obtained its name in the mid-1990s after a 1994 report from California’s Assembly of Consumer Protection, Governmental Efficiency, and Economic Development Committee found that women paid, on-average, $1,351 more per year than men for goods and services.

After the study, California passed the state-wide Gender Tax Repeal Act of 1995, which prohibited discriminatory prices on services.

However, this didn’t stop price disparities elsewhere.

While the pink tax has only formally existed for nearly 30 years, women have faced unfair taxation for much longer. This tax is just furthering the separation between men and women instead of moving towards the future and closing the gaps that hold onto terrible historic traditions.

According to a November 2022 journal from the University of California, Berkeley, women pay 15% more for gendered products, such as hygienic care, than men.

This means that women can end up spending approximately $188,000 more in their lifetime on goods, such as cosmetics and clothing, and services, such as dry cleaning and haircuts, than men, according to a Feb. 18, 2020 California Legislature Senate Committee on Judiciary Informational Hearing.

This tax is putting women under more stress because they have to account for increased prices even more than people buying men’s products do. Especially in Athens, which has a 29.9% poverty rate, according to the AthensClarke County website based on 2019 Census statistics, women don’t have the extra money to spend because of discrimination.

The pink tax is just another sexist and unfair attack on women. The products provided to customers are the same, so companies should not make ultrafemininity the norm by portraying products targeted towards women a certain way and marking them up in price.

There currently are no laws prohibiting gender discrimination in pricing in Georgia, so something must be done. If companies won’t take it upon themselves to make the change for equitable pricing, the government needs to.

California has paved the way for fighting against gender discrimination in terms of economy with their Gender Tax Repeal Act of 1995. Even though it isn’t a progressive state, Georgia should still follow California’s lead.

With 52.3% of Georgia’s population being affected by the Pink Tax, according to the 2020 United States Census report, the state needs to take action and place restrictions on disparities between prices in order to end the centuries-long discrimination against women.