
Price discrimination tends to be worse for women - aaronbrethorst
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/22/women-really-do-pay-more-for-razors-and-almost-everything-else/
======
JPKab
Articles like this promote a very absurd notion that there is a vast
conspiracy to actively discriminate against women. While there is, of course,
real discrimination against women, this simply isn't one of them.

The only discrimination going on here is that men are more discriminant on
price than women are with broad categories of items. I work with retail data,
and I know this is 100% true. Items marketed towards men in the "Consumables"
category (deodorant, razors, shampoo, etc) are priced lower than their female
counterparts because decades of scientific analysis has shown that men are
more likely to shop for these particular products based on price than women
are.

In economic terms, depending on the category, men and women have different
price elasticity curves.

An interesting twist on this is that certain Men's products within the
"Consumables" category are at high price points due to the data showing their
respective consumer group to be far less price sensitive, especially with the
18-25 male demographic with hair care products.

This is all data and algorithms talking, not actual discrimination.

Anyone with a son can also point out exactly why boy's underwear costs more
than girl's underwear: boys get very excited about underwear with characters
on it, so parents are less price sensitive on those products. But according to
this story, this is just another form of evil discrimination towards boys
wearing underroos.

Source: I help my customers set prices for their product/store combinations
using data.

~~~
Hermel
As a further factor, I have heard that women tend to return clothing more
often than men, leading to increased costs for shops that sell to women in
comparison to those that sell to men only.

~~~
mdip
I'd imagine the same can be said for trying on clothes. The more clothes are
tried on, the more they are worn out, resulting in loss.

Part of this problem, though, is the company's fault. To this day I can never
make sense out of the "sizes" that appear on women's clothes. My wife's closet
has size numbers that vary by 5! We are almost exactly the same size, but my
jeans say "30/30", meaning 30" waste, 30" length (at least, that's what I
_think_ they mean) and since my weight doesn't _ever_ fluctuate, I have the
same size jeans spanning 10 years. Her jeans, same brand, which perfectly fit
me (to the point that I mistakenly have worn them) have a single number on
them.

I _rarely_ try things on and I don't think I've ever returned clothes because
of a bad fit. I've been the same size since High School and I know if I buy a
15 shirt and a 30/30 pair of pants, they'll be within an acceptable margin of
error that they'll fit. She can pick out a 4 or a 7 and not have any idea if
it's going to fit.

~~~
Shish2k
> To this day I can never make sense out of the "sizes" that appear on women's
> clothes

Why does nobody step up and fix this problem? (See also: clothes for women
with useful sized pockets). Given the amount of complaining I see, I would
have thought that somebody releasing a range of sensible clothes in women's
sizes would instantly dominate the market...

~~~
dragonwriter
> > To this day I can never make sense out of the "sizes" that appear on
> women's clothes

> Why does nobody step up and fix this problem?

Because its a cross-industry consistency problem [0], so if someone tries to
fix it, you've just created _yet another_ set of inconsistent-with-everyone-
else sizes.

[0] Lying on top of a "reducing a multidimensional issue to a single variable"
problem, sitting astride a "trying to avoid making people buying the product
associating the negative body image feelings the fashion industry has
deliberately manufactured to create the need for certain products with the
products themselves by labeling some of the axes of variation in a clear
manner" problem. So, you know, layers of issues...

------
xiaoma
>Compounding the injustice, she said, is the wage gap. Federal data shows
women in the United States earn about 79 cents for every dollar paid to men.
“It’s a double whammy,” Menin said

That statistic completely ignores experience and numbers of hours worked per
week.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/04/16/its-time-
tha...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/04/16/its-time-that-we-end-
the-equal-pay-myth/)

"The wage gap statistic, however, doesn’t compare two similarly situated co-
workers of different sexes, working in the same industry, performing the same
work, for the same number of hours a day. It merely reflects the median
earnings of all men and women classified as full-time workers."

~~~
ryan_j_naughton
You are absolutely right that controlling for time worked, experience,
education, etc makes virtually all of the wage gap disappear.

Nonetheless, that is totally irrelevant to this topic. Regardless of the
reasons, women do earn less than men on average. Since the topic here is about
spending money (i.e. consumption side), then the amount of income available to
a person to spend is absolutely relevant (regardless of the origin of the
disparity in income). The reality is that most women are making less than men
and yet goods tailored towards them do cost more.

~~~
oldmanjay
I'm old enough to remember that it used to be a source of humor that women
spend indiscriminately on things they don't actually need. Now it's a source
of handwringing and overwrought blogging.

This is one of the rare cases where the old days were better.

------
maratd
Price discrimination? Give me a break.

The demand/supply curve is different. Maybe parents are willing to spend more
on their daughters? Maybe women spend more on consumer goods in general? Who
knows, it could be a thousand different things.

Whatever the reason, I doubt there's a conspiracy to charge more for goods
because of gender. How does that even work? If the retailer ignores the
supply/demand curve they're losing money ... they won't do that. If they're
charging at the intersection and prices differ between gender-specific goods
due to any of the reasons I mentioned above ... well that's the free market?
What's the alternative? If you start messing with the price you'll create
either shortages or over-supply of the goods.

~~~
ryan_j_naughton
Price discrimination in no way implies a conspiracy nor any ill-intent on the
part of the company. It simply implies that there are different customer
segments with different willingness to pay and not perfect competition.

Seniors and military discounts aren't BC companies objectively care more about
those populations. It's because those groups tend to have slightly less
disposable income, so the company uses price discrimination to segment their
market. The same is true here for women -- their price elasticity is different
than men on average

~~~
maratd
> Price discrimination in no way implies a conspiracy nor any ill-intent on
> the part of the company.

It was implied by the commissioner and really, the article as a whole:

"DCA Commissioner Julie Menin, who launched the investigation this summer,
said the numbers show an insidious form of gender discrimination."

Not only that, there wasn't any price discrimination to begin with. In your
example, people are being charged different prices _for the same good_. That
is definitely price discrimination and attempts to segment the market, you're
right.

But that's not happening. They're trying to build an equivalence between
different goods. There are many reasons that doesn't work. Another comment
here did a fantastic job of explaining why. See above.

------
mdip
We figured this out a long time ago with "body wash". I was always a bar-of-
soap kind of guy and when I was sent out to purchase toiletries for the
family, I did a quick price comparison and made an "executive decision". I
purchased 8 Axe branded body washes for $2.00 total (combined coupons and
store specials). I was able to find several scents that appeared to be neutral
to floral (discovered _all_ of them were _way_ more floral than I would have
ever expected for a men's product).

She _freaked out_ (as I was expecting; I wasn't being naive or anything), but
after a few showers she not only stopped complaining but agreed that they were
of equal quality and some smelled better than the Dove or Suave products she
preferred.

I generally do all of the toiletry shopping in the house and I keep an eye on
coupons and store specials -- I have _never_ found as solid of discounts on
products branded for women than I find on men. The body wash thing is always
the biggest gap -- probably because a lot of men don't use body wash so they
either need to give men an extra incentive to try them or deeply discount them
to sell them at all.

Shaving cream and hair conditioner are the second worst offenders from my
limited research and led to the discovery that shave cream is a redundant
product. My wife used to buy a $30 "premium feminine shaving gel" (for _cough_
sensitive shaving needs). I tried it once when I ran out of the white bubbly
stuff and happened to do so just after washing my hair. I realized that
outside of the color, it was nearly identical to a store brand hair
conditioner that we shared (and bought in a bottle 20 times larger for $9.00).
So the next time we tried just using the conditioner -- it was a massive
improvement over the best shaving cream I've ever used (though, to clarify, I
am a shower shaver, and I have no idea how well it cleans up with a sink
shave). Instead of a $1.50-$3.00 shaving cream bottle that lasts 5-6 shaves
(or a $30.00 one) we use our bulk conditioner that lasts about six months
between the two of us.

------
jsnk
Discrimination? Please... Can we not use this word to describe this phenomena?
The undertone of the study and article make this situation sound like there's
something cynical happening. It's just supply and demand.

I am a 5'11" male with medium build. Whenever I try to get my shoes sized
10-11, I consistently pay 10-15 bucks more than someone with shoe size 7 or
13. I also have to pay more on cloths because people who can wear xxs or xxl
usually get swoop in on good deal during sales. Medium or large are always
sold out. Does this sound like "discrimination"?

~~~
DanBC
"price discrimination" is a term that isn't related to "sexual
discrimination".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination)

~~~
marcoperaza
Sure, but that's clearly not what this investigation is about. From the
article:

> _DCA Commissioner Julie Menin, who launched the investigation this summer,
> said the numbers show an insidious form of gender discrimination.
> Compounding the injustice, she said, is the wage gap. Federal data shows
> women in the United States earn about 79 cents for every dollar paid to
> men._

They're framing this as a social justice issue and even using that ridiculous
79 cents statistic, which has been thoroughly discredited. When making actual
apples-to-apples comparisons, the wage gap becomes an error bar: ~96 cents on
the dollar.

~~~
DanBC
> which has been thoroughly discredited.

No it hasn't.

> When making actual apples-to-apples comparisons

Which is how sexists justify paying women less for doing similar work, whilst
ignoring the fact that they're also preventing women from getting the higher
paying work.

~~~
xiaoma
Paying someone less who works fewer hours a week is not sexist. Neither is
paying someone with less experience less.

If you want to highlight discriminatory behavior, you really are better served
with an apples-to-apples comparison.

------
IkmoIkmo
The clothing bit was the only thing that surprised me, in the Netherlands I
feel women's clothing is incredibly, ridiculously cheap. My gf buys solid
branded 30 euro pants, mine start at 40 and are shitty, solid branded pants
start at 70-80, for example. The difference is pretty huge. Buying decent
formal wear for work is much more expensive for men, both the shoes and the
suit I feel. For some decent leather shoes I'm spending upwards of 150 euros,
gf walks around in stylish 30 euro leather short heels that are fine quality,
80 euros would be considered expensive but long lasting for her.

I know it's anecdotal, but I've talked about this with friends quite often and
they all say it. And men's floors are usually singular, too, the other 2-3
floors are all for women, with one especially for girls. The competition for
women's clothing is so strong it's pushing prices down. Thought it'd be no
different in the US. Not just shops either, second hand markets for girls are
insane, you'll easily buy pants for 2 euros at the ijhallen (popular
fleamarket in Amsterdam, mostly for girls age 19-26 or so) that cost 30 euros
in the shop a year ago, and have the same quality as a guys' 80 euro pants
haha. It's crazy.

Then there's the laundry, I've never heard of that before either, nor seen it.
Different prices for hairdressers though is very common here though, in fact
certain gender-only hairdressers are pretty much the majority. All the other
stuff like razors, a more expensive 'female version' of a toy etc is really
familiar, too.0

------
striking
According to Gillette, there's a difference between men's and women's razors
and razor blades. Whether it's just marketing copy or it's actually the truth,
I couldn't tell you. But this is how they justify the price difference:
[http://www.gillettevenus.com/en-us/how-to-shave/hair-
removal...](http://www.gillettevenus.com/en-us/how-to-shave/hair-removal-
methods/dont-share-his-razor)

~~~
mdip
There are pretty significant differences. Prior to the latest version, the
women's product has been _much_ larger (they're pretty similar now, except for
the blade assembly). The blades also included a larger rubber pad on both the
top and bottom of the blades. On a basic visual inspection, the women's
product seems like it _should_ cost more.

I'd imagine some women prefer the larger blade and find the much larger handle
more convenient for reaching areas of the body men don't typically shave. My
wife, however, loves using my (inexpensive) Dorco razor. She doesn't care
about the added padding on the top/bottom of the blades, nor that it's not
specifically a "women's" product. I think the marketing copy holds some actual
realities here. They've made a product that they believe was designed to meet
unique shaving needs of most women, it's a product that uses more raw
materials, and required unique R&D that was not shared with their men's razor.
It also had the added risk that women would reject it due to these
differences.

------
prolways
The study from which the article draws is also posted on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10785107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10785107)

I'm going to copy some of the comments I made over there. Hopefully this is
acceptable.

The study does not say there is price discrimination, but it heavily implies
it. The WSJ article does say there is discrimination.

First of all, I think the article falls into some kind of Political
Correctness trap by claiming that certain products are for boys and others are
for girls. Why couldn't a boy want the pink scooter? Why couldn't a girl want
red?

Building on that, if we see the pink one as "girls" and the red one as "boys"
then it does look like discrimination. However, if we view the red one as
"neutral/base color" and the pink one as a less popular "color option" it
seems less like discrimination and more like paying for a unique
customization. Do we know there isn't a blue scooter priced the same as pink?

The conclusion (of the study) states:

> DCA found, on average, that women pay approximately 7 percent more than men
> for similar products. Products’ price differences based on gender are
> largely inescapable for female consumers simply due to the product offerings
> available in the market.

This seems fundamentally contradictory to me. If the products are sufficiently
similar but priced differently, why would women buy the "women's version?"
What makes it "inescapable?" If product A is so much better than product B,
such that buying Product A is "inescapable," I'd expect a difference of more
than 7% in price.

The Wall Street Journal seems to draw the reasonable conclusion in its
headline: Women should buy the "men's product."

------
mdip
A lot of folks have pointed out that there is likely no conspiracy among the
companies to attempt to screw women out of money. They're not identical
products, there's economies of scale at work, etc, however, I believe there's
a few places that marketing has specifically been targeted at women for
products that such targeting is not happening (at least not successfully/to
the scale of) for men: Shampoo, Conditioners, and Soap. Most men don't care
enough about these things (outside of shaving needs, which have outrageous
products similarly targeting men), but enough women do care enough for them to
be victims of marketing and wasted money.

These products principal feature _is_ the advertising. "Natural" and
"Essential Oils" and other common "features" mean exactly nothing (or not at
all what folks _think_ they mean). And many use pricing for the explicit
purpose of implying quality. Obviously a $90 shampoo beats a $5 store brand.

I _freaked out_ when I found out a shampoo my wife loved was $40! So on one of
my shopping adventures, I purchased several different brands of conditioner,
shampoo and body wash (up to $30.00 w/coupon and no ingredients she was
sensitive to), and generic 1 oz. travel bottles. I filled each and we switched
them weekly for a few months. Her $40.00 one was in the middle of the rotation
and made it "one shower" \-- she hated it[1]. In each case the pick was in the
bottom 25% for price. Body Wash: Axe for Men O_o, Shampoo: Kirkland (Costco),
Conditioner: a Suave product (Suave was a back-up in all three, consequently
-- I buy all at once when coupons/store discounts match up, so we needed a
few).

[1] I have never told her that was "her brand" \-- she would have taken that
as me calling her dumb/gullible when the reality is that these companies spend
large sums of money to specifically target her -- and there's just no good
reason to be a dick.

------
lmcnish14
This seems to get trotted out once a year like it's a new discovery.

Consumer Reports study from 2010:
[http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-
archive/2010/jan...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-
archive/2010/january/shopping/same-products-different-prices/overview/same-
products-different-prices-ov.htm)

University of Central Florida study from 2011 (I can't find it online anymore)
was mentioned in some of the other studies as saying basically the same thing.

New York Times on The Pink Tax from last year:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/opinion/the-pink-
tax.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/opinion/the-pink-
tax.html?_r=0)

------
gruez
>Compounding the injustice, she said, is the wage gap. Federal data shows
women in the United States earn about 79 cents for every dollar paid to men.
“It’s a double whammy,” Menin said

Can we put this meme to rest already? That gap is mostly attributed to career
choices that lead to less pay.

------
Alex3917
I submitted the original study the other day, with commentary on the
methodology:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10768591](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10768591)

------
vezzy-fnord
Assuming that, as implied, most of these goods are purely substitutable with
no physical difference but in "gender-specific packaging," then one could
actually interpret this as the capitalists (inadvertently or not) pushing
consumers towards deconstructing traditional gender roles through their mark-
up pricing. We can thus observe the profit motive serving a positive social
function, though YMMV depending on ideological preconceptions.

------
escherize
For scooters or toys, would like to see quantities sold. Because I would
expect that economy of scale would push prices down for the non-female-
gendered versions.

Also I would wager it's more common for a girl to want a red scooter than for
a boy to want a pink scooter, hence a larger market size for the non-female-
gendered scooter. Not sure what to make of that, though.

------
thezilch
Products' pricing can't be their value; if pricing isn't algorithmic, someone
is doing something very wrong! Or us nerds have a market to exploit -- I think
many people are doing this in many nitch corners.

So, computers are discriminatory... we might want to ban them along with
encryption; think of the children.

------
Nadya
//Edit: Welp, looking at the wrong number is going to hurt my karma a bit.
Thanks for the corrections, I'll allow this slip-up to remain for posterity
reasons.

One screenshot hurts their entire argument, because I cannot take the rest of
what they say at face value. Notice that the $18.49 package gives _five_
razors while the $14.99 package gives _four_ razors. The $3.50~ markup is due
to _an additional razor being provided_. The package is misleading because it
is _called_ "Hydro 5" but provides 4 razors as indicated in the bottom right
corner of the packaging.

[http://i.imgur.com/p3Z2lnJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/p3Z2lnJ.png)

//End Edit - The above was my mistake of looking at the wrong number on the
women's packaging as explained by the replies to this comment.

Tacking on a reasonable counter-argument to the tail end of the article hoping
people will miss it is also an annoyingly common practice I see these sorts of
hatemongering articles.

And you know what? _They probably have a valid point._ But they couldn't take
the time to carefully make their comparisons, clean the data of any faulty
issues (like the razors), and give any counterpoints some proper space. So
I'll dismiss it like I would any other topic that tried to do this.

 _> Ravi Dhar, director of the Center for Customer Insights at the Yale School
of Management, said how we perceive “women’s” products could help explain why
gender markups persist in the marketplace.

>“Many men's products are not seen as men's products,” he said. “They might
just be seen as products in the category.”

>Which makes the “pink” version a specialty product, he said. _

~~~
danhak
> One screenshot hurts their entire argument, because I cannot take the rest
> of what they say at face value. Notice that the $18.49 package gives five
> razors while the $14.99 package gives four razors. The $3.50~ markup is due
> to an additional razor being provided.

No, you've misread the packaging. Both packages contain 4 razor cartridges.
The number 5 you highlighted on the women's product advertises 5 blades per
cartridge (same as the men's product) but the package contains only 4
cartridges as you'll see if you look a little further to the right. You can
see a higher resolution photo of the product and some more details here:
[https://shop.riteaid.com/schick-hydro-silk-razor-
cartridges-...](https://shop.riteaid.com/schick-hydro-silk-razor-
cartridges-4-cartridges-0368651)

~~~
Nadya
_> No, you've misread the packaging._

It appears I have actually. Thanks for pointing this out! That removes a lot
of my issue with the article with that issue, because it didn't exist to begin
with. Just my own misreading. :)

If I'm allowed to excuse why I overlooked that 4 - I'd blame my familiarity
with the male packaging. I didn't even notice the 4 when looking for numbers
because it didn't have words next to it! At this point I'd be more offended
that they think the word "cartridge" is too difficult for women and use a
picture of the blade instead, as if they're children.

------
the_economist
Not to mention fewer hours worked.

