Here’s why you should buy the men’s version of most products

A study into the “Gender Tax”, looking at products aimed at women compared to products aimed at men, found that women are being charged more for similar goods.

A disparity chart revealed that women pay more 42% of the time, pay the same 40% of the time, and pay less than men 18% of the time.

A recent report from the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs found that, on average, products geared towards girls and women cost 7% more than similar goods for males. Forty-percent of the time the pricing is equal.

The DCA conducted the study in New York City across several industries and included more than 90 brands.

Across all the 35 categories, female products were priced higher than their comparable male products in 30 of them.

For example, Target sells a red Radio Flyer scooter and a pink Radio Flyer scooter on Target.com. The DCA’s ultimate goal was to show how nearly identical products can cost so vastly different depending on their target audience. This is notable, given the “adult” stage of a consumer’s life is longer than any other lifecycle stage. They estimate that women pay thousands of dollars more than men over the course of their live – and we’ve got a feeling the findings could be pretty similar over here, too.

Broken down by category, women pay 7 percent more for toys and accessories, 4 percent more for children’s clothing, 8 percent more for adult clothing, 13 percent more for personal care products and 8 percent more for home health care products.

While there are manufacturing costs to take on board, like women’s clothing often being made from more than one type of fabric whereas men’s can be more uniform, as the researchers note, prices are set by the retailer and not the manufacturer.

“Individual consumers do not have control over the textiles or ingredients used in the products marketed to them and must make purchasing choices based only on what is available in the marketplace”, the agency wrote.