We live in a society that is prone to putting people in boxes. From the day you are born, you come home from the hospital swaddled in either pink or blue; taught that girls play with Barbies and boys play with trucks. 

We, as a nation, are so concerned with labels and classifications that we have forgotten what it is like to exist without them. We have made great strides towards gender diversity, but of course, most items are still either marketed towards men or women, but not both. 

These companies that market towards women increase the costs of their femine products, calling them “luxury items.” This includes clothing, children’s toys, razors, deodorant, and period products – which is about as far from luxury as you can get. These products can be as much as 13% more expensive than their masculine counterparts. 

With women making 80 cents to a man’s dollar, it’s inhumane to mark up the prices on items due to being labelled ‘luxury.” This tax makes women’s products way more expensive than men’s despite them costing the same amount to make. 

Period products are extremely expensive, especially when combined with the fact that nobody really knows what is in them.

While there are many independent period product companies coming out with new products and transparent ingredient lists, those can still be costly. 

The average woman can end up paying $364 a year on period products. That’s just barely under a dollar a day. While $364 dollars on period products may not seem like a lot per year, combine that with the cost of clothes, which women can spend up to 76% more than men do per month.

Most people attribute the amount of money women spend on clothes to being “shopaholics” or “not budgeting correctly,” but it’s almost impossible to correctly budget if you already have less money in your bank account than a male coworker and you have extra supplies you need to purchase. 

The Pink Tax can even apply to things such as haircuts. Regardless of the length of your hair, men tend to pay around $28 and women will probably pay around $48. 

Women have forever existed with the idea that you have to be polite to everybody. We have stayed quiet for too long about the unfair prices and the differences in pay.

People have been protesting against this for decades, and yet in 2019  we are still fighting for equality. We need to get the word out and take our power back.