The author tries to present the analysis of the survey on Pink Tax like a source of women discrimination in Kazakhstan and the USA.
Keywords: Pink Tax, discrimination, women, female products, men, mentality.
Over the past 20 years, California, Connecticut, Florida, and South Dakota released reports on gender pricing in their states. In 2010, Consumer Reports highlighted the matter nationally with a study that found, at the time, women paid as much as 50 percent more than men did for the similar products [1]. A study by the New York City Consumer Affairs Administration commissioned by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio found that products targeted at women were more expensive than products targeted at men.
Despite the fact that females all over the globe are witnessing the problem of an extortionate cost of women’s goods, there are insufficient data on the situation in Asian countries and in Kazakhstan, which means that in most cases Asian feminine representatives have no clue about current pitfalls in their countries and may not know about existence of this tax.
In my research I wanted to prove that females spend most of the money on self-care and hygiene products, which may lead to financial problems for women. Therefore, it was also significant to investigate how females face poverty from a gender perspective. In addition, the problem of an extortionate cost of hygiene products badly influences the consciousness of society in the perception of women. The trend of sexualization of women is taking place all over the world, females are usually shown as weak and become victims of discrimination, which is closely bounded with phenomena of the Pink tax.
A report by the American Psychological Association (APA) on the sexualization of girls in the media found that girls are depicted in a sexual manner more often than boys; dressed in revealing clothing, and with bodily postures or facial expressions that imply sexual readiness. In a study of print media, researchers at Wesleyan University found that on average, across 58 different magazines, 51.8 percent of advertisements that featured women portrayed them as sex objects [2]. Hence, the media creates a special image of an ideal woman, the majority of ordinary women stream to.
However, when women appeared in advertisements in men’s magazines, they were objectified 76 percent of the time [3]. Thus, one of the objectives of my study was to compare how the pink tax influenced social environment of female’s and all those transgender men and nonbinary persons who menstruated. Some experts think that the pink tax is one of the marketing ploys because females are tending to buy expensive things and to a huge waste of money for self-care. Hence, it was important to classify the proportion of same sold essentials for men and women and check if this could be the cause for manufacturers to inflate prices.
Document analysis was used in order to get numerical data about the pitfalls of gender inequality. It proved that the problem of the Pink Tax is actual all over the globe and provided information about how phenomenon of the Pink Tax affects lenses of family economy, ethics and environment. The results of the last 10 years’ researches around the globe outlined the actuality of the problem of the Pink tax as women have to pay more for the same products and service in comparison with men [4]. Big manufacturers enhance the problem because of financial benefits playing with the ideal images of successful women who are ready to spend a big sum of money for self-care and hygiene products. Hence, Pink tax discriminates women for the profits of big companies.
The conducted surveys allowed to gather various information and collect quantitative data from a large number of surveyed females from Kazakhstan and some Asian countries in a term to gather numerical information about how much women spent on self-care and hygiene products, because it was needed to find out whether that pitfall was common in Asia [5] and they paid out for essentials. 62,5 % of surveyed people have already noticed a difference in the price of products labeled «for women» and 71,4 % of surveyed people think that they are overpaying for an identical product labeled «for women». Thus, the idea of gender discrimination got the evidence from the customers.
Also, surveys helped to answer whether Asian females witnessed poverty from a gender perspective as female representatives and find out whether feminine representatives were oversexualized. The method gave an opportunity to know more about an expenditure of women’s waste on essentials, found that some of them fell like they faced poverty. However, surveys did not give me qualitative data, to find out if females spent the vast majority of money on self-care and hygiene products and I conducted an interview with a hygiene sales manager to get exact numbers on which products of hygiene were most popular for men or women. He claimed that men's goods were of the same quality as women's goods, but they were cheaper because there was less demand for them. Hence, the law of economics “demand creates supply” works for men benefits and women have to pay more.
The interview with the sales manager supported the words of the expert of feminist organization and their leader Gulzada Qyztaj Serzhan, co-founder of Kazakh feminist initiative. She said, “Discrimination against women in economic, cultural, social, political, civil and other spheres is directly related to the absence or small number of women themselves in decision-making in all these areas. When we are not there and there is no access to decision-making levels, we will always depend on what was decided for us.” As a consequence, pricing as well as the quality of goods and services used by women or demand created by women are not carefully considered to meet the needs of women.
Since methods such as a survey and document analysis cannot provide information about how the pink tax influences social environment of female’s and all those transgender men and nonbinary persons who menstruate I tried to take the interview from transgenders to compare their views in a case of environment. How men and society react on them, whether they humiliated because of biological signs, menstruation, physiological features. These methods would help compare the thoughts and feelings of two various groups of women and to support or refuse that the extortionate cost of hygiene products badly influences the consciousness of society in the perception of women. However, I could only try to chat with them and no one responded. Perhaps, it is connected with our mentality to percept this group of people in a negative way.
By knowing what different women think about society’s perception of them, it could be seen how the Pink tax affects the environment and females witness violence and become victims of surrounding people. However, that effect of the Pink tax on the environment and on the sexualization should be researched further as it should be conducted from more people. Moreover, influence of this tax on transgender and nonbinary people was not explored. Therefore, it would be better to know thoughts of those people but in Kazakhstan most of the transgender individuals prefer to be secretive, due to sever society and mentality. They are so afraid of others that they are even frightened to give anonymous answers. Hence, take the interview or organize a focus-group would be hard.
Most of the results were expected but I did not expect that males prefer to use products labeled “for women” due to the range of the choice. During conducting the survey, taking the interviews I wanted to know psychologist view on that situation and how the Pink tax affects not only women but also transgender people, unfortunately it was hard to find those individuals and I am still waiting for their responds. Most of the analyzed articles and reports are women, so they are biased because gender inequality concerns them directly. By improving the world situation they could have impact on their own standard of living, they are interested to tell the truth about Pink Tax. Anyway, if more males had taken the survey, the results would be more precise. To my mind to make the results stronger more men should answer for the questions.
References:
- Hoffman M. The Pink Tax: How women pay more for pink. — Bankrate. 2021, January 11. Retrieved from https://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/pink-tax-how-women-pay-more/
- Kidron, E. Period poverty: why Periods shouldn’t be a financial burden and how one retailer is helping? — World economic forum. 2021, Marth 8. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/international-womens-day-periods-financial-burden-how-retailers-can-help/
- Carolym B.Maloney. The Pink Tax How Gender-Based Pricing Hurts Women’s Buying Power. — United State Congress, 2016. 2016, December. Retrieved from https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/8a42df04–8b6d-4949-b20b-6f40a326db9e/the-pink-tax---how-gender-based-pricing-hurts-women-s-buying-power.pdf
- Swift, J., Gould, H. Not An Object: On Sexualization and Exploitation of Women and Girls. — UNICEF USA. 2021, January 11. Retrieved from https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/not-object-sexualization-and-exploitation-women-and-girls/30366
- Gogitidze K. “Tax for pink”: why women pay more? — BBC News. 2016, March 8. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/russian/society/2016/03/160308_women_shops_pink_gender_marketing
- Naizabekova, A. Owning and Disowning the Female Body: Mediating Gender and the Conservative Values Clash in Kazakhstan. — Illiberalism. 2021, December 21. Retrieved from https://www.illiberalism.org/owning-and-disowning-the-female-body/.
