The pink tax is costing women thousands of dollars annually. The pink tax is the term used for the increased cost of products and services that are marketed toward women. Some general products, such as razors or deodorant, can be gender-neutral products, but are marketed toward women and are more expensive. More cities should ban the pink tax to help women save money.

The pink tax is making it so women are more financially impacted than men. A Forbes.com article titled “Will California’s New Pink Tax Law Save Women $47 Billion Annually?” published December 2022 says it’s estimated, on average, women in California spend around $2,381 more per year than men for the same goods and services- that's almost $47 billion more than men spend in California! The price gap is most noticeable among personal care and sanitary products, such as razors - $10.99 for a pack marketed towards women, $10.49 for a pack marketed towards men - and other products like shaving cream, which is $2.49 for women and $1.69 for men, that's almost a dollar difference! That's not even mentioning the overpriced menstruation products we buy every month. It’s not only sanitary products, it happens everywhere, financial journalist Beth Kobliner shows that women, especially ones over 40, a lot of the time pay a higher fee for car insurance than men of the same age, even with similar to identical driving records. Women are spending too much money on products we use a lot, whether it's a need or a want, any price discrimination is sexist and wrong!

We have been aware of this issue for a while and yet the sexism continues. An article titled “There's A Pink Tax On Women” published February 2022, from Forbes.com states “The pink tax officially dates back to 1994, when a report from California's Assembly Office of Research found that 64% of stores in five major cities charged more to wash and dry clean a woman's blouse than they did a man's button-up shirt. California passed the state-wide Gender Tax Repeal Act of 1995, making it illegal for a business to discriminate with respect to the price charged for similar services due to a person’s gender.” This is an issue that’s been affecting us for almost 40 years! The state of New York is the first state that banned the pink tax. April 2020 is when former Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed off on the ban of the pink tax, and on September 30, 2020, it was put into effect. In January of 2023, California instituted a ban on the pink tax as well. Although states are starting to put an end to the sexism women have faced, there is still a long way to go.

Although you may be wondering why you should care, or how this affects you, as a teenage girl I have first-hand experience with how much money my family and I spend on these products, this is a microaggression and just sexism and affects every woman in America! So if you're a woman you know how much you're financially impacted by the pink tax, and if you didn’t, hopefully now you know. If you're a man then this is hurting all the women you see and all the women you love, burdening us with this huge expense that we are forced to face. 

 Women have a huge financial weight on their shoulders with this unfair tax, not only on health products but other products and services. We’ve been facing this issue since before 1994. Recently we’ve seen states like New York and California instate these laws to help us women not have this financial burden, and while we still have a lot to do and a lot more states to hopefully instate this ban, I'm happy to see this slowly getting better and hope that where I live and everywhere else in America can see this sexism and try their hardest to stop it.