OLYMPIA — Benjamine Howard’s group presentation on gender-based pricing for her U.S. government and politics class received an A. Now, the high school project has turned into a state Senate bill.
Senate Bill 5171, sponsored by Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, seeks to do away with the “pink tax,” where businesses charge women more for goods or services that are similar in every way, except marketing, to what men buy. The bill also includes a section that protects consumers who are targeted based on other demographics like race.
It follows a bill passed in the 2020 legislative session that exempted sales taxes for feminine hygiene products such as tampons, pads and cups.
“There is no reason why a pink item should be more expensive than a blue item, when the only difference is the coloring and the packaging,” Dhingra said.
Howard worked with a group of seniors across two AP government classes at Lake Washington High School in Kirkland for the TVW Capitol Classroom program. Taught by teachers Bethany Shoda and Michael Dawson, the program allows students to pitch bills to lawmakers on issues affecting people in Washington state.
The project showed how gender-based pricing begins with children’s clothes and toys, and continues into adulthood with services like haircuts, dry cleaning and personal care products.
Ana Ferreira, a student who worked on the presentation, said the group went into businesses and found price differences on razors, children’s toys, vitamins and more.
“Gender-based pricing can seem kind of insignificant to people like middle class … and isn’t more than a few dollars, but for families in our community who live paycheck to paycheck, especially for single mothers and minority women, it does make a bigger difference,” Ferreira said.
The bill makes exceptions for pricing differences if there is a legitimate reason, like the amount of labor or cost of materials.
If the bill is passed as is, the state Attorney General’s Office would review complaints and dole out civil penalties. First-time violators could face a fine up to $10,000. Additional violations could cost up to $1,000 each. And an enhanced penalty up to $5,000 applies if consumers are targeted based on age, race, sexual orientation or other demographic characteristics.
The bill is expected to receive a hearing Monday.
Ferreira and Howard said they based their project on legislation passed in New York, California and Miami-Dade County.
Research shows women pay more than men for personal care products such as deodorants and lotions, while men pay more for shaving creams and gels. This bill targets any gender-based pricing, so companies that charge men more than women could also be fined.
The Department of Consumer Affairs found women’s products cost 7% more than men’s and suggests that women are paying thousands of dollars more over the course of their lives — while making less money.
In 2020, women in Washington earned 80% of what their male counterparts made according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“We know that women get paid less than men. We know women of color get paid even less than that,” Dhingra said. “And so to then find out that you’re paying more for certain items just does not make sense.”
Timeka Tounsel, assistant professor of black studies in communication at the University of Washington, said white people are marketed to based on their gender, age, family and location, while people of color are grouped according to their ethnicity.
“The pink tax is not just a universal pink tax,” Tounsel said. “There’s the pink tax that white women pay and then there’s the pink tax that women who aren’t white women pay.”
Dhingra said one of the students brought up that products for the Black community are priced differently than those advertised to non-Black communities, so they wanted to take into account race.
“I think we really just wanted to address the seriousness of this issue, and that it’s not just an issue of gender,” Howard said. “It strongly connects to race and other factors.”
Dhingra said people have been supportive of the bill, though she hasn’t received feedback from businesses or retailers. She praised the students who brought forth this idea.
“I think it’s really important to engage our youth. They have so much energy, so many ideas, are so optimistic, and they aren’t given a lot of opportunities to do that engagement,” Dhingra said. “And I think when you create that opportunity, they really rise up to the challenge.”
An earlier version of this article named the high school program “Capital Classroom program” and was thought to have been created by teachers Bethany Shoda and Michael Dawson. This has been corrected to link to the TVW Capitol Classroom program, taught by these teachers at Lake Washington High School.
