The Times has a fascinating splash today on the discrepancy in prices between products for women and men. It reports that high street stores are charging women up to twice as much as men for practically identical products, with the addition of pink to something seemingly boosting its price hugely. The most striking finding is that products as banal as razors can be twice as expensive for women as they are for men.
MPs are already involved, with Maria Miller, chair of the women and equalities committee, threatening to summon retail bosses to parliament to explain the ‘unacceptable’ higher prices.
But while the Times has performed a vital public service in sifting through packs of razors, girls’ and boys’ toys, and clothing, is this really a matter for MPs? The paper has revealed that retailers think it’s perfectly reasonable to think that women are spendthrift mugs who will happily pay over the odds for products. Not all of us, are, of course: I benefit from being a tall, strapping lass, so I’ve been shopping for years in the men’s departments of sports shops for my much cheaper, non-pink kit – and no, I don’t buy stupid pink toiletries either because I have more interesting things to spend my money on. But as Richard Hyman, an analyst at RAH advisory, tells the Times today, ‘this is the most price competitive retail market that I have seen in 35 years so I can only imagine that retailers have differential pricing because the market will bear it’. What he is politely saying is that prices for women are higher because by and large, female consumers are apparently happier to spend more money on products. If they weren’t, sales would go down and retailers would adjust their prices accordingly.
What can the Commons women and equalities committee do to stop this menace of women choosing to buy these more expensive products? If Maria Miller must produce a report on sexist pricing on the high street, surely her conclusion would be that the best action to take would be for women who have read this excellent investigation to say they won’t put up with this any more, ditch the 31p pink razor, and pick up the 19p orange one instead.
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