Lifestyle

This hidden tax is costing you more, every time you shop

Dec 09, 2015

Despite previous media coverage about Australia’s secret “pink tax”, major retailers don’t seem to get the message. Women are still being charged more than men for everyday products, and when you consider the current pressures put on pensioners, a pink tax seems plain wrong.

Advocacy group Get Up describes the pink tax as a “phenomenon that sees similar or identical products costing more when they’re marketed to women”. There are no characteristic differences between each product, except one will often be blue whilst the other is pink.

This week, Starts at 60 conducted independent research to examine whether the pink tax is still rampant throughout Australia. We found that despite public pressure, there are still many products wherein women will pay a pink tax. Here’s where we spotted those sneaky extra charges:

Big W boasts an in-house fashion line called ‘Emerson.’ For the fellas, Emerson denim jeans cost just $7. However for ladies, the price more than doubles to $20 per pair!

At Target, your husband can buy a Bonds Chesty singlet for $15. If you want your own Bonds Chesty though, it’s going to set you back $20. That’s 25% more for a matching singlet!

Woolworths stocks a broad array of moisturisers from cosmetic giant L’Oreal. Men can pick up a 50ml L’Oreal moisturiser for $16.68, whilst women will pay a whopping $24.99 for the same amount! That’s almost double, even though both L’Oreal products claim to offer 24 hour moisture.

At Coles men can buy themselves a Quattro Razor Kit for $12.10. The same razor kit, manufactured by the same brand, will cost women $13.45. This small difference adds up when you consider that women shave larger portions of their body.

Incontinence becomes a fact of life as we age, but it costs women more. Men can buy an 8 pack of Tena pads from Woolworths for $12.29. Yet an 8 pack of Tena for women costs an inexplicable $13.60.

When you consider unit pricing (cost per gram) of individual items, the pink tax is even more garish. Vanilla protein powder in a pink tub will cost $5.45 for 100 grams. Whereas vanilla protein powder in a blue tub will cost just $3.91 for 100 grams! Both tubs are manufactured by Natures Way, and stocked at Woolworths.

As Get Up states, a few cents or dollars “might not sound like much, but it adds up. Women in Australia already earn 18.8% less than men, and when you factor in the gender price gap, we see that women are being paid less at work, and then paying more at the shops.”