Women must spend more than men, particularly on big items such as housing and transit, for the sake of their own safety.
You’ve heard of the “pink tax,” that much-maligned norm of the market in which products advertised to women are priced higher than the same products advertised to men. (It used to be a big deal in the previous decade when “men” and “women” were still common terms of parlance.)
The “pink tax” was so controversial that Congress’s Joint Economic Committee released a whole report on it in 2016. They described the practice thus:
Common products and services marketed to women, ranging from razors and soaps to dry cleaning, often cost more than similar products marketed to men. . . . There is a great deal of evidence that there are significant price differences for practically identical products. In some cases, the only difference is the color. This markup has become known as the “pink tax.”
Even as a teenager (as I was when the report was released), I found their analysis unsound. Wouldn’t the evidence cited merely imply that women are more easily seduced by the color or presentation of a product than men? So much so that women will pay more for the same product because it’s girl-coded? (No one is stopping women from purchasing, say, the cheaper blue razor instead of the costlier pink one, all else equal.)
However, the general sway of the pink-tax argument rings true: It’s simply more expensive to be a woman. Oftentimes, the world of hair, makeup, grooming, fashion, footwear — along with the entire “self-care” economy — is cited as the cause of this financial gender imbalance. The average American woman spends nearly $3,800 each year on her appearance, after all.
While it goes without saying that women spend more money than men on products such as eye shadow, curling irons, and high heels, the real pink tax is much less frivolous — and much more pernicious.
Women must spend more than men — particularly on big line items such as housing and transit — for the sake of their own safety.
Women, especially those who are young and unmarried, are highly vulnerable to sexual assault, harassment, and all other such horrors. Walking home alone in the city at night, AirPods blasting Def Leppard, is not a luxury granted to the fairer sex. Women who live in urban areas remain in a state of low-frequency fear — always looking over their shoulder, avoiding eye contact with others, seeking out well-lit and well-peopled areas, etc.
The prevalence of crime in a community disproportionately impacts women, as women are overwhelmingly more likely than men to be the victim — rather than the perpetrator — of a violent crime.
Universally, housing units in crime-ridden areas of a city are less expensive than those in safer areas. As women are required to think about their own safety 24/7, they are forced to balance a terrible equation when searching for housing: “How much can I afford to spend on housing vs. how expensive is it to live in an area where I won’t get harassed, or worse?”
Whereas men are more free to choose a housing unit based on amenities or the number of bars and restaurants nearby, for most women in the housing market, safety must be at the top of their list.
The loss of basic safety standards in a community forces women to pay more to lessen the probability of their being harassed, mugged, or abducted. The potential examples are numerous:
- A woman who used to take public transit to and from work now shells out for the cost of a personal vehicle after a man masturbated in front of her on the metro.
- A woman who enjoyed living in an up-and-coming area in the city had to move to a safer — and more expensive — part of town after having been catcalled and followed one too many times.
- A woman who would take the subway to an evening event now takes a taxi there and back after a man tried to grab her on the train.
These aren’t hypothetical stories — these are anecdotes I’ve pulled simply from friends of mine who live in cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. In the former, rape and robbery increased by nearly 20 percent from 2022 to 2023. In D.C., violent crime surged by 39 percent in the same period.
Women uniquely experience the impact of crime in their communities — and they have to pay for it.