The Cost of Doing Femininity: Gendered Disparities in Pricing of Personal Care Products and Services

Abstract

Economic discrimination has been a major focus of gender research for the past several decades and such studies reveal a persistent gender wage gap. This study examines another aspect of the interaction between gender and the economy that has been largely ignored by social scientists—gender-based disparities in the cost of goods and services in the personal care industry. We examine prices charged for personal care products and services that are targeted toward women or men and find that women pay more than men for certain items and services. Our research suggests that although the differences are not uniform across types of services or products, women do tend to pay more than men for items such as deodorant, haircuts, and dry-cleaning. We suggest that such practices contribute to gender inequality by increasing women’s economic burden and reinforcing essentialist thinking about gender (i.e., that women and men are biologically different).

Full text

Running head: The Cost of Doing Femininity
The definitive version of this article can be accessed at:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12147-011-9106-3
The Cost of Doing Femininity:
Gendered Disparities in Pricing of Personal Care Products and Services
Megan Duesterhaus, University of Central Florida
Liz Grauerholz, University of Central Florida
Rebecca Weichsel, University of Central Florida
Nicholas Guittar, University of South Carolina-Lancaster

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ABSTRACT
Economic discrimination has been a major focus of gender research for the past several
decades and such studies reveal a persistent gender wage gap. This study examines
another aspect of the interaction between gender and the economy that has been largely
ignored by social scientists—gender-based disparities in the cost of goods and services in
the personal care industry. We examine prices charged for personal care products and
services that are targeted toward women or men and find that women pay more than men
for certain items and services. Our research suggests that although the differences are not
uniform across types of services or products, women do tend to pay more than men for
items such as deodorant, haircuts, and dry-cleaning. We suggest that such practices
contribute to gender inequality by increasing women’s economic burden and reinforcing
essentialist thinking about gender (i.e., that women and men are biologically different).
KEYWORDS
Price disparities, doing gender, consumer products, sociology of the body

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THE COST OF DOING FEMININITY:
GENDERED DISPARITIES IN PRICING OF PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS AND
SERVICES
Persistent gendered wage discrimination has been well documented, especially for
women of color and female-headed families [7, 9, 15, 38], but much less attention has
been paid to any economic hardships women face in the consumer marketplace. While a
few researchers have examined gendered price discrimination in retail sales and
consumer services [2, 3, 26, 27], research in this area is underdeveloped and social
scientists have not examined the everyday costs of being a woman (i.e., doing femininity)
in terms of the consumption of common products and services.
The current study fills this gap by examining the cost of doing femininity through
an analysis of goods and services in the personal care industry. We document price
differences in three industries that provide similar products or services to both women
and men: hair salons, dry cleaners, and the retail sale of personal care products such as
deodorant and body spray. Our research suggests that although the differences are not
uniform across types of services or products, women do tend to pay more than men for
certain types of services and products, especially those that provide the most visible
evidence of gendering the body. We argue that such practices reinforce essentialist
thinking about gender (i.e., that women and men are biologically different) and place
additional economic burden on those who already earn less.

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THE COST OF FEMININITY
Civil rights laws prohibit discrimination in certain non-retail markets such as
employment and housing, but do not cover discrimination in the vast majority of retail
markets [2]. According to Ayres:
…the most gaping hole in our civil rights law concerns retail gender
discrimination. No federal law prohibits gender discrimination in the sale of
goods or services. A seller could flatly refuse to deal with a potential buyer of a
car or a paperclip because of her gender. And while the civil rights laws of the
1860s prohibited race discrimination in contracting, the civil rights laws a century
later only prohibited sex discrimination in a narrow range of “titled” markets. The
thousands of other markets that make up our economy are completely unregulated
with regard to gender…discrimination…[2, p. 3].
Although there is no federal law prohibiting price discrimination on the basis of gender, a
few states/cities (California, Massachusetts, New York City) have outlawed the practice
of charging women and men different prices for equal services [27].
Price discrimination—the practice of charging one group different prices than
another for identical goods or services—has been shown to exist in different markets on
the basis of race, gender, and class.1 For instance, Ayres and Siegelman [3] examined
whether car dealers discriminated against women and minorities during the purchase of a
new car. They found that dealers made much better initial and final offers to white men
than they did to black men, black women or white women. For instance, compared to
prices offered white men, the prices quoted were about $200 higher for white women,
$400 higher for black women, and $900 higher for black men. Even after negotiating, the

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5
final markup price was 50 percent higher for white women, twice as much for black
women and four times as much for black men, as compared to white men. Ayres and
Siegelman note: “without any negotiating at all, two out of five white males obtained a
better offer than their counterparts achieved after bargaining on average for more than
forty minutes” [3, p. 44].
The retail clothing industry is another area that has been studied. According to a
chief economist for the American Apparel Association:
Since the 1920s, retailers have purchased and have merchandised women’s
apparel differently than men’s….The way women’s apparel is sold to the retailer
is different than men’s and the retailers themselves have a different system for
pricing women’s apparel than men’s. Even in areas where garments are unisex,
like knit shirts, a shirt in the men’s department will sell for less than the same knit
shirt in the women’s department [47, p. 13].
According to Whittelsey and Carroll [47], women pay more than men for clothes that are
virtually the same.
The area we are primarily interested in is the personal care industry. Here too,
data gathered from government-issued reports and journalistic investigations suggest that
women pay more for various products and services than do men, including personal-care
products, cosmetics, and health insurance (with the exceptions of automobile and life
insurances) [27]. The California Assembly Office of Research also found that women
systematically paid more than men for services in hair salons and dry cleaners [29, 46].
For instance, of 199 hair salons and 67 dry cleaners investigated in New York City, 48
percent of haircutters charged women more than men for a simple haircut and women

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were charged nearly three times the price that men were charged to clean their dress
shirts [36].2 Liston-Heyes and Neokleous [23] found similar patterns in the U.K. Such
gendered price disparities apparently persist. In 2011, Ms. Magazine launched a national
campaign (including via Facebook) to stop the “gender pricing gap,” asking readers to
provide information about products that are made by the same company and contain the
same materials or ingredients, but charge more for the product marketed to women (they
promised to publish the most egregious cases in an upcoming issue).
Of course, it could be argued that price differentials are justifiable because the
service or good is not identical or similar in kind. For instance, Liston-Heyes and
Neokleous found that unisex hair establishments justified charging higher prices for
women’s basic haircuts than men’s because the former “take longer,” “are more fussy,”
“are more difficult,” and “expect more” [23, p. 115]. Yet, Liston-Heyes and Neokleous
[23] specifically asked for identical hairstyles. They also note that hair-cutting technology
is similar for women and men, that the training required to work in a men’s hair
establishment takes as long as that to work in a unisex or women’s salon, and that wages
paid to women and men hairdressers are not significantly different. Thus, the rationales
for charging women more than men for basic haircuts do not necessarily hold up to actual
practice. Even if we recognize that variables such as hair length, duration of service, and
materials used may differ for women and men, it is noteworthy that pricing policies are
still often based upon gender itself as opposed to these other variables.
Myers notes that similar arguments have been made in the dry-cleaning business
for charging higher prices for laundering women’s as opposed to men’s clothes: “It is
harder to press a woman’s shirt with equipment designed for men’s shirts” [27, p. 40].

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Economist Landsburg [22], speaking of his non-systematic attempt to understand why
women were charged more to dry-clean their shirts, recounts:
I called three different dry cleaners and asked for their explanations. The first said
that men's shirts are machine pressed, while women's are hand pressed. That left
me wondering why they don't simply quote different prices for different kinds of
pressing. The second said that women's shirts require specialized treatment
because they are typically doused with perfume. That left me wondering why men
who use after-shave are not chronically dissatisfied with their dry cleaners. The
third said that this was their pricing policy, and if I didn't like it, I was free to shop
elsewhere.
Interestingly, justifications for women’s increased cost in obtaining certain
services such as haircuts seem to mirror practices in other areas, especially employment.
Passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (which requires that equal pay must be given for
equal work in the same workplace) dictated that jobs need not be identical, only
“substantially equal” [40]. Even after controlling for job characteristics and a variety of
other factors, however, women’s wages are lower than men’s [7]. And similar to reasons
for not granting women equal pay (e.g., women place greater priority on family than
career), those used to charge women more for similar services rest upon individualistic-
level explanations (e.g., women are more difficult to please, need special ingredients, or
require more time) and seem grounded in cultural stereotypes about gender.
In terms of personal care products and services, it is virtually impossible to prove
price discrimination on the basis of gender. To do so, detailed information on the costs of
raw materials, production, and marketing must all be demonstrated as being equal for

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both women’s and men’s products and services. Thus, in this study, our goal is simply to
document the existence of price differences in personal care products and services.
Whether any differences are due to discrimination per se, or other factors, is unclear, but
we argue that it is also largely irrelevant to women’s lives. That is, if women do in fact
pay more for basic services and products, then women can be said to incur a greater cost
of doing gender than men. Thus, our research provides insight into the myriad ways in
which it costs to be a woman in contemporary society.
METHODS
Data
Effort was made to analyze items or services that were comparable for women
and men so that meaningful comparisons could be made. We chose three areas where
products or services are directly comparable or similar: hair salons, dry cleaners, and
personal grooming products.3 The items and services selected for analysis were chosen
firstly because they are consumed and utilized broadly by both women and men. In the
case of personal care products, we selected items that fulfill the same basic need for men
and women but for which slightly different versions are unambiguously marketed to each
gender. Personal care products which are primarily advertized as unisex (e.g. soap,
toothpaste) were excluded from consideration. Similarly, personal care products
generally consumed by members of only one gender (e.g. nail polish, tampons) were also
excluded. Included in our analysis are prices for basic haircuts; dry cleaning of shirts,
pants, blazers, and suits; and standard personal care items (deodorant, shave gel, razors,
body spray). Pricing data from hair salons, dry-cleaning establishments, and personal-

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care products were gathered by telephoning providers, physically visiting stores, or, if
available online, by examining company websites. Data gathered via telephone or
physically visiting stores were restricted to a four-county metropolitan area in the
Southeast with a population of approximately 2 million. The overall cost of living index
for this area is equivalent to that for the U.S. (98 versus 100). A score of 100 represents
the national average for major metropolitan markets, and, at 98, our chosen metropolitan
area has a cost of living index just shy of the national average. All data were collected in
the summer of 2006.
Samples and Coding
Salons. A sample of hair salons was culled from yellow page listings for zip
codes in the four-county area. A total of 1,234 hair salons were identified after the list
was purged of inappropriate listings (e.g., beauty supply stores). A list of 100 randomly
generated numbers was used to select the salons to be included in the sample.4 Each
salon selected into the sample was telephoned and asked pricing information for both
women’s and men’s haircuts. The salons were asked the starting price of a woman’s
haircut and style and the starting price of a man’s cut and style.5
Dry cleaners. A sampling list of dry cleaners was also taken from yellow page
listings for zip codes in the four-county area. From a total of 784 listed dry cleaners, 100
businesses were randomly selected to be included in the sample using a list of randomly
generated numbers.6 Each sampled dry cleaner was telephoned and asked to state the
price schedule for dry-cleaning the following items: man’s two-piece suit, woman’s two-
piece suit, man’s blazer, woman’s blazer, man’s shirt, woman’s shirt, man’s slacks, and
woman’s slacks.

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Personal-care products. In order to examine whether or not there are substantial
differences in the cost of goods and services in the personal-care industry, we selected
and examined four items that are used by both women and men, but marketed separately
to each.7 These items included deodorant, shaving gel/cream, razors, and scented body
sprays. Although there are other personal-care products manufactured by the industry,
many of them are either not explicitly marketed in a gendered way (e.g. toothpaste), or
only marketed to one gender (such as make-up). Therefore, these types of items were
excluded for the purposes of this study.
Data were collected from four national retail chains: Target, Wal-Mart, CVS, and
Walgreens. Coding for products at CVS and Walgreens was compiled using the prices
listed on their respective websites. Because Target and Wal-Mart do not list their
personal care products on their websites, data collection was completed at a randomly
selected physical store location for both Target and Wal-Mart. Every item found in each
store of the four product types (deodorant, shave gel/cream, razors, and body spray) was
coded for brand, the gender to which the product was marketed, price, and either the
amount in ounces (deodorant, shave gel/cream, and body spray) or the specific number of
items in the package (razors). Items that were identical in all ways except color or scent
(e.g., varieties of Secret deodorant differing only in fragrance) were coded as one item. A
total of 538 products were coded, including 199 deodorants, 89 shave gel/creams, 204
razors, and 46 body sprays.
FINDINGS
Hair Salons

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Of the 100 salons for which data were collected, only 15 had equal starting prices
for women’s and men’s haircuts (10 of these were franchise salons). There was no salon
that offered cheaper haircuts to women. On average, women paid $35.02 (SD=11.38) for
a basic haircut and men paid $22.78 (SD=6.23). An independent samples t-test confirmed
significant differences between the prices of women’s and men’s haircuts (t=9.2, p <
.001). The price discrepancy between women’s and men’s haircuts ranged from $0 to
$25.00. These are prices for a basic cut that is similar for men and women; the true cost
of a haircut is likely to be higher because the majority of salons had additional add-on
charges depending upon the hair texture, length, and “difficulty” of the cut.
In order to further evaluate the extent to which characteristics other than the
gender of the client impact the cost of a haircut, a one-way analysis of variance was
conducted to evaluate the relationship between salons at different price points and price
differences between women’s and men's haircuts. The sample of salons was divided into
three categories (low-end, mid-range, and high-end) based on the cumulative percentages
in the frequency distribution of the cost of a woman’s haircut. 8 The dependent variable
was created by subtracting the price of a men's cut from the price of a women's cut for
each salon. The ANOVA was significant, F(2, 97) = 137.15, p = .001. The means and
standard deviations for the price differences between women’s and men’s haircuts for the
three salon types are presented in Table 1.
TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE
Follow-up tests using Tukey HSD were conducted to evaluate pairwise
differences among the means. Pricing disparities between men’s and women's haircuts
differed for each of the salon groupings (low-end, mid-range, and high-end). The results

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of the ANOVA indicate that the more upscale a salon, the higher the magnitude of
discrepancy between the price of a woman's haircut and a men's haircut.
TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE
Dry Cleaning
The prices charged to women and men to dry-clean their respective two-piece
suits, blazers, shirts, and slacks were compared using a series of independent samples t-
tests. No significant differences were found in the cost to clean women’s and men’s suits,
blazers, and slacks (see Table 3). There were, however, significant differences found in
the cost to clean women’s and men’s shirts. The average cost to clean a men’s shirt was
$2.06, while it was $3.95 for a women’s shirt (t = -14.64, p < .001). This pricing disparity
exists before considering the additional costs incurred if the item of clothing is made of a
special fabric, such as silk or rayon, or has embellishments or pleats. In other words, the
observed pricing disparity is for identical shirts except that one is labeled a “men’s” shirt
while the other is a “women’s” shirt. Ninety-seven percent of the sample included an
additional charge for special fabrics, 94 percent charged more for embellishments, and 92
percent of the sampled dry cleaners included an up-charge for pleats. Because women’s
clothing is more likely to have embellishments and pleats and to be made of delicate
fabrics, the actual average dry cleaning costs for women is likely to be even greater than
the base price noted above.
TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE
Personal-Care Items
Independent samples t-tests were used to compare the price per purchase,
ounces/number of items per purchase, and the price per ounce/item for women and men

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for deodorant, shave gel/cream, razors, and body spray. As shown in Table 4, no
significant differences were found for the price of a single stick of deodorant for women
and men, (t = -.13, p = .90). Thus, at first glance it would appear that men and women
pay the same amount for deodorant but closer examination reveals that women’s
deodorants contain fewer ounces (t = 6.53, p < .001) and cost more per ounce (t = -5.04, p
< .001) than men’s. On average, women pay $1.44 per ounce of deodorant while men pay
$1.15, a difference of almost 30 cents per ounce. Additionally, a typical container of
deodorant for women contains 2.29 ounces while an average deodorant for men contains
2.86 ounces.
TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE
The t-tests revealed a slight difference between the price each gender paid for a
container of body spray (t = -1.94, p = .06) but not for ounces per container (t = -1.07, p =
.29) or price per ounce (t = -.57, p = .57). Women pay on average $5.81 for a container of
body spray while men pay $4.58. No significant differences were found between women
and men for the overall cost (t = .90, p = .37), amount (t = .75, p = .46), or cost per ounce
(t = .29, p = .80) of shaving gel/cream. Moreover, no significant differences were found
between women and men for the cost per package of razors (t = .63, p = .53), number of
razors in a package (t = 1.43, p = .15), or the cost per individual razor (t = -.70, p = .48).
DISCUSSION
Overall, our data suggest that women tend to pay more than men for certain
services and products. These gendered price disparities are not as widespread as what
journalists have previously reported but it does appear that women pay more for certain

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goods (deodorant), services in hair salons (haircuts), and dry-cleaning of shirts.
Unquestionably, costs for haircuts and dry-cleaning vary by region (e.g., women and men
pay more in New York City than Tulsa, OK) but within regions, the question is whether
women would pay more than men for the same services. Our findings suggest that they
do.
Because we did not control for production and marketing costs, or elasticity of
supply and demand [16], we are not able to establish absolute price discrimination on the
basis of gender. For instance, it is possible that the formula for women’s deodorant may
contain more (expensive) fragrances than those of men’s9 or that women’s shirts are more
difficult to dry clean than men’s. However, it stands that women do in fact spend more
than men for certain comparable goods and services in the personal care industry, and
this has important implications for women’s daily lives. While these products and
services are relatively inexpensive (though haircuts can run $100 or more for women),
the cumulative cost is not insignificant. These costs also hit hardest those who already
earn lower wages. Of course, women with scarce financial resources may buy generic
brands, have less need for dry-cleaning, and frequent lower end salons (where there is
less gendered price disparities), but gendered products are pervasive and even lower-end
salons charge more for haircuts. Thus, on a daily basis, it appears to cost women more it
does men to “do gender” appropriately [45].
This high price of femininity is fueled by the cultural expectation that women
appear attractive and women’s own desires to do so. Indeed, the success of marketing
equivalent products and services differently to each gender suggests that these products
are in some way fulfilling the consumers’ wants and needs. As noted by Keat:

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In a market economy, rival producers compete with one another in pursuing their
overall aim of profit-maximization. Their success or failure in this task is
ultimately determined by their relative ability to meet, in a cost-effective manner,
the demands of actual or potential purchasers of their products: that is, to satisfy
the wants or preferences of consumers, where these preferences are indicated by
the consumers’ willingness to pay for the products on offer [19, p. 28].
Women, in fact, do seem to be willing to pay more for products or services.
Why might women be willing to act is such seemingly “irrational” (economically
speaking) ways? One answer to this question is that they do so in order to create or
maintain difference on a valued dimension (i.e., gender). And the juncture at which this
occurs is where body, identity, and consumerism converge. In other words, the
construction of the gendered self is accomplished in part by consumer practices [6, 17,
19, 24, 41]. The choice to buy one particular product over another, or to buy one
particular service over another, is less about any meaningful differences in the competing
products and more about how the chosen items reflect the consumer’s identity.
Individuals express themselves through what they buy, whether it is clothing, cars,
personal electronics, or music [11, 35]. The results of this study suggest that personal
identity is expressed even through the purchase of the most mundane products and
services (e.g., razors, deodorant, hair cutting). While the use-value of a personal care
product is likely the primary reason for its purchase (e.g., deodorant is purchased and
used to mask body odor), the product is also bought for its symbolic meaning and what
that product represents (e.g., a deodorant with floral fragrance and extra moisturizers is
thought to beautify and feminize the body). By buying a “woman’s” deodorant, using a

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“woman’s” razor, or getting a “feminine” haircut, women are able to express themselves
as feminine in a largely masculine world. It is perhaps for this reason that many services
and items marketed to men are priced less: the expressions of masculinity through
consumption are not likely to be focused on grooming and appearance, although for some
men this may be changing [5].
In our study, we found that certain items tended to reflect larger disparities than
others. For the most part, they were items that are the most visible ways of gendering the
body. For instance, the dry-cleaning item that reflected disparity was the “shirt,” which is
arguably the most gendered piece of clothing among those we studied. Both men and
women may wear slacks, but only women wear “blouses.” Women and men may don
suits, but men wear “dress-shirts.” Perhaps more telling is the disparity surrounding
haircuts. Hairstyles are visible to all and are a major means by which women do gender
(as well as race and class) [4, 5, 43]. As Barber notes, “hair is a social symbol that allows
people to associate themselves with others along the lines of race, class, gender,
sexuality, and age” [5, p. 457]. Further, the hair salon is the site within which women
participate in women’s culture [5, 13, 14, 33] and as such, “purchasing beauty work in
the salon is one way women… participate in the ‘naturalizing’ of social arrangement” [5,
p. 458].
Thus, we suggest that services and goods that contribute most obviously to visible
aspects of the gendered self, such as haircuts or feminine blouses/shirts, are most
susceptible to price disparities. Haircuts, in particular, because they are both
public/visible but also linked personally/biologically to the body [42], and allow women

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17
to participate in women’s culture (in a way that going to the dry-cleaner’s or Target does
not), are likely to be one service for which women are willing to pay a high price.
This “visibility” explanation does not entirely account for why deodorant, of all
the personal care products we analyzed, showed significant differences in gender pricing.
While perspiration is culturally gendered (women perspire, men sweat), the type of
deodorant used certainly is not visible (although many deodorants are scented and may
smell more “manly” or “womanly,” but this difference is not likely to be noticed). Hence,
it is interesting to consider the importance of deodorant in terms of body maintenance.
Bryan Turner [37, p. 3] discusses the concept of “social fluids,” arguing that fluids that
leak or seep from the body are regarded as dangerous and a “vehicle of contamination.”
The most feared female fluid, of course, is menstrual fluid [37], but if we take seriously
the idea that any bodily fluid is perceived as dangerous, it is easier to see why women
may be persuaded to invest more to prevent its occurrence. Arguably, men’s social fluids
are more acceptable than women’s, so that heavy sweating (and odor) may be more
damaging to women’s images than men’s.
There is another aspects of buying an “image” that was observed in our study. Not
only does consumption (in particular, haircuts/styles) provide a means by which we do
gender, but it also appears to enable us to “do social class.” We found that high-end hair
salons had greater gender disparity in the cost of haircuts than those found in mid-range
or low-end salons. In this way class adds another dimension to the gendered price
disparities seen across all salons. Williams [48] found similar class-based pricing
disparities in her study of two toy stores—one a “big-box store,” the other a more
“upscale” store. She found that identical items at the upscale store were priced

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18
substantially higher than those at the big-box store. Affluent customers were willing to
pay more because they believed it enhanced their social standing. Similarly, it appears
that women who frequent high-end hair salons are willing to pay a higher price in order
to convey femininity and class-status. Of course, patrons of a high-end salon are not
necessarily of a more privileged social class than those who frequent lower-end salons,
but expensive haircuts provide a rich opportunity for anyone who can afford them a
visible means of doing “difference” [44], and achieving the “look” of privilege.
Thus, social class is important to understanding consumption patterns, not only in
terms of “doing class” but also for understanding how class and gender may intersect in
terms of consumption patterns. We suspect that it is indeed more privileged women who
buy more, and more expensive, products in order to enhance their public images. Yet, for
those women who must (or hope to) participate fully in the professional arena, where
“image” is critical, there is a higher price to pay than men in these positions.
But focusing solely on individual practice ignores structural features that serve to
reinforce gender inequality. We suggest that to understand why women spend more
money on personal care products and services, it is important also to consider the
gendered institutions in which they operate. Acker [1] argues that while organizations are
presumed to be gender neutral, assumptions about gender are pervasive. One way in
which this occurs is through “the construction of symbols and images that explain,
express, reinforce, or sometimes oppose those divisions” [1, p. 146] and this includes
grooming and appearance. Women must pay particular attention to how they present
themselves in public and the workplace because when women interact in the gendered
workplace (and other institutions) their appearance “signifies something” [21]. With over

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19
75 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 54 participating in the workforce [10],
many American women spend a significant portion of their time conforming to the
managerial imperative of “rationality and efficiency” [18, p. 20], and thus “masculinity.”
Although women are expected to act in ways that can be read as masculine in the
workplace, they are, nevertheless, faced with societal expectations that women should be
feminine. In response, women may buy and use products that are expressly “feminine” in
order to reinforce their feminine identities but also to fulfill gendered expectations in the
workforce.
We believe that the development and marketing of gendered products designed
for personal care also reflect and reinforce essentialist thinking about gender, and
therefore serve to reinforce gender distinctions. Consider that pricing differentials on the
basis of gender can only be sustained if 1) women believe that it is natural and normal to
pay more than men do for essentially the same products or services, and 2) women
believe that there really is a “need” for gendered products (or that products marketed to
men are inadequate for their needs). Products directed at one gender or the other therefore
reinforce the idea that gendered products are rooted in sex-based differences (e.g., ph
levels, hormones), as well as gender-based differences (e.g., personal care, grooming
practices). The apparent acceptance of gender-based price differentials in society (note
the lack of public or academic attention paid to it) reflects the cultural perception that
gender categories are fixed and that women and men really are radically different types of
human beings, in need of different products. Gender is already a divisive social force, but
the pervasiveness of gendered products and services reinforces such essentialist thinking.

Cost of Doing Femininity
20
Marketers have successfully convinced women and men that the gendered
products they sell are in fact different (recall Secret’s promise that their deodorant is
“Strong enough for a man but made for a woman”) and consumers literally “bought into”
this essentialist-based marketing (i.e., that men and women are biologically different and
require different products). Apparently, most opt for items that “match” their gender,
regardless of the price. It is also interesting to observe that products are becoming
increasingly “gendered.” For example, until recently “lotion” was not explicitly gendered
but recently has become so (e.g., Vaseline Intensive Care for Men). Do women really
believe that men’s deodorant wouldn’t work, or do men believe that the generic lotion
won’t heal dry skin, or are they simply opting for the product that enables them to
express their femininity and masculinity?
Of course, corporations and marketers did not have to think too far outside the
box to come up with gendered products. They merely tapped into cultural practices that
start early in life. Most parents, for instance, seek to eliminate any gender ambiguity in
children by putting bows in girls’ hair or dressing them in gender-appropriate colors and
children quickly come to embody these gendered differences [25]. Using “women’s” or
“men’s” razors simply extends this practice to adult bodies. There is an irony here, of
course. If women and men really were essentially different, there would be little need to
prove this on a daily basis through clothing or products. Thus, gendered products provide
yet another means by which we “do gender” on a daily basis.
The social construction of the gendered self through consumerism, and
essentialist beliefs about women’s and men’s inherent differences, help explain why
women simply do not opt to buy cheaper products—those marketed to men. But this is

Cost of Doing Femininity
21
not the whole story. While buying the similar but cheaper product sold in stores may be
an option, gendered structural arrangements constrain human agency. A gender-based
pricing scheme is not something that can be argued at the point of sale in a hair salon.
One might simply abandon such an establishment and seek out a salon that has a pricing
strategy based on gender-neutral criteria, but our findings suggest that the cost is still
likely to be greater for women regardless of the ways in which salons justify their pricing.
Dry cleaners present a similar challenge. One way to challenge the heightened cost
associated with laundering women’s shirts may be to buy and wear men’s shirts, but
doing so further reinforces masculinist norms and forces women to “buy into” hegemonic
masculinity, presenting women with even more challenges of doing gender. And as
Featherstone reminds us, individuals may refuse to cultivate this appearance, “yet if they
do so they must be prepared to face the implications of this choice within social
encounters” [12, p. 98].
We see similarity between the phenomena noted here and other ways that
masculine values are imposed as the “norm.” For instance, charging women more to dry
clean their blouses because their shirts do not fit on equipment made for men’s shirts is
similar to airlines excluding women from being pilots because airplanes are made to fit
men’s bodies (e.g., Boyd v. Ozark Air Lines) [49]. A basic haircut for a woman is not
likely to be more complicated than that for a man. In the dry-cleaning business, not every
men’s shirt fits neatly on the machine press nor does every women’s shirt not. Although
it is difficult to rule out the possibility that women’s haircuts are more labor and time-
intensive than men’s, a fairer practice would be to base prices upon actual time or labor
involved rather than assumptions about gender differences. Certainly prices for haircuts,

Cost of Doing Femininity
22
dry-cleaning, and products should be tied more closely to factors such as style or labor
rather than gender, but doing so would still not eliminate the cost of doing gender for
women. Given gender differences associated with hair and clothing styles, even a pricing
scheme based purely on style or labor costs would still serve to reinforce gender
differences and result in a higher cost of doing gender for women. It would be a start, for
sure, but legal remedies are also important.
It should be noted that laws exist in California, Massachusetts, New York City,
and the province of Ontario that prohibit the practice of charging women and men
different prices for equal services, but similar bills have failed to pass in Florida, Rhode
Island, and West Virginia [27, 28, 46]. Further, there is evidence that such laws have
done little to reduce gendered price disparities [30]. Two years after passing the Gender
Tax Repeal Act in California, which prohibited gender discrimination in pricing, a report
published in the Daily Times of Los Angeles found that 45 percent of hair salons, 46
percent of launderers, and 17 percent of dry cleaners still charged women more for these
services [30]. Loopholes built into the law allowed service providers to charge more to
women if they feel the service will be more difficult or time-consuming than similar
services for men [28, 29].
The existence and acceptance of gender-based price disparities represents one
way in which gender distinctions and inequality are reinforced in daily life. We believe it
is important to consider whether women and men pay different prices for similar goods or
services in a wide range of areas because these consumer and industry practices affect
women’s standard of living. They also, ultimately, speak to issues of fairness. In Blau and
Kahn’s [7, p. 38] discussion of why wages are important, they note that wages affect

Cost of Doing Femininity
23
individuals’ economic well-being and relate to “issues of fairness and equity.” It is for
precisely these reasons that the heightened, literal cost of doing femininity deserves
further investigation.

Cost of Doing Femininity
24
NOTES
1. Price discrimination is widely acknowledged among economists, who are primarily
interested in the conditions under which price discrimination “works”; that is, when are
consumers willing to pay more for identical or similar items? [8, 34].
2. Following the release of this report, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani signed into law a bill
preventing gender discriminatory pricing practices within the city of New York [31].
3. We recognize that women’s and men’s haircuts are not identical and that hair
represents major ways in which gender displays are accomplished. However, these
stylistic differences are separate from the price differentials, which is the focus of this
study.
4. We were unable to obtain information from five salons (2 no answer, 1 disconnected
line, 1 no longer in business, 1 refused to give prices over the phone). In these cases an
alternate salon was selected into the sample via a random number.
5. Some salons reported a price for a “woman’s cut and style” and a “man’s cut.” In order
to account for these discrepancies, prices were recorded for just women’s and men’s cuts,
excluding style, for these particular establishments. Several of these salons did not have a
starting price for a women’s cut without a style. In these situations prices were recorded
for the women’s cut and style and a man’s cut.
6. A total of eight dry cleaners were eliminated from the original sample. One of the
telephone numbers proved to be a non-working number, one number was a fax machine,
and another business had stopped accepting clothing for dry cleaning. The final five
businesses refused to provide their prices over the telephone. Eight alternate dry cleaners

Cost of Doing Femininity
25
were then selected, again using a list of randomly generated numbers, resulting in a final
sample of 100 dry cleaning establishments.
7. The determination of whether a product was marketed to women or men was made by
an examination of the product’s labeling (e.g., Arrid for Men) and marketing message
(e.g., Degree’s men deodorant “protects men who take risks”) and/or the categorization
of the store by aisle organization (physical stores) or website organization. In no cases
was it unclear which products were for whom.
8. The cost of a women’s haircut was used to create a variable representing the type of
salon, as there was a wider range of prices for women’s cuts than men’s overall.
9. We do know that products such as razors, body spray, deodorants and the like tend to
be manufactured in countries that have relatively low wages [39] and therefore, the
higher cost of women’s products is not likely to be based solely upon these labor costs.

Cost of Doing Femininity
26
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Table 1: Average Price Difference between Women’s and Men’s Haircuts by Salon Type
Haircut N Price Difference
Low-End Salons
23
2.17 (3.33)
Mid-Range Salons
34
11.71 (4.48)
High-End Salons
43
12.24 (3.21)
Note: Main cell entries are means, standard deviations in parentheses.

Cost of Doing Femininity
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Table 2: Tukey HSD Comparison for Price Difference between Women’s and Men’s
Haircut
95% Confidence Interval
Comparisons
Mean Price
Diff
Std. Error
Lower Bound
Upper Bound
Low-end vs. Mid-range
-9.53*
1.0
-11.92
-7.14
Low-end vs. High-end
-15.87*
.96
-18.16
-13.59
Mid-range vs. High-end
-6.34*
.85
-8.37
-4.31
*p < .001

Cost of Doing Femininity
33
Table 3: Average Dry Cleaning Costs in Dollars by Item and Gender
Clothing Item N Price
Two Piece Suit
Women
100
8.51(1.54)
Men
100
8.57(1.56)
Blazer
Women
100
5.26(1.26)
Men
100
5.24(1.26)
Shirt
Women
100
3.95(0.88)*
Men
100
2.06(0.93)
Slacks
Women
100
4.30(0.92)
Men
100
4.27(0.90)
Note: Main cell entries are means, standard deviations in parentheses.
*p < .001

Cost of Doing Femininity
34
Table 4: Average Cost (in dollars) and Volume of Personal Care Products by Item and
Gender
Product N Price Volume Price per oz/item
Deodorant
Women
81
3.16(.84)
2.29 oz.(.06)**
1.44(.05)**
Men
118
3.15(.73)
2.86 oz.(.06)
1.15(.03)
Shave Gel
Women
25
2.67(.24)
7.0 oz.(.53)
.45(.06)
Men
64
2.97(.18)
7.5 oz.(.36)
.47(.04)
Razors
Women
80
6.14(.29)
4.82(.42)1
3.00(.37)
Men
124
6.40(.28)
5.62(.35)
2.67(.30)
Body Spray
Women
30
5.81(.57)*
4.43 oz.(.49)
1.76(.28)
Men
16
4.58(.27)
3.80 oz.(.35)
1.50(.35)
Note: Main cell entries are means, standard deviations in parentheses.
1 Denotes average number of razors in package.
*p < .10
**p < .001