Columnists
Mind the gap
Here’s a game to play, next time you find yourself in a grocery store or a pharmacy with some time to kill.
Go to the personal care and grooming section, find a razor or a tube of deodorant, and check the price. Then find the equivalent product marketed to the opposite gender, and check that price, too.
(Despite the excessive plastic packaging, women’s deodorant only holds about 50 per cent as much substance as men’s, so be sure to compare the price by grams, rather than by unit.)
Try again, this time with a different brand, or a different product.
It seems inexplicable. Is it the pink colouring used in the plastic that makes women’s razors about 20 per cent more expensive than men’s? Perhaps it’s the lovely, feminine perfume in women’s deodorant that makes it more costly.
Of course, the pharmacy will also sell items infinitely more expensive for women than men, including, but not limited to makeup or menstrual products (politely referred to as feminine hygiene products.).
It’s a detail most forget about, or don’t even notice. But it’s an important distinction.
According to the World Economic Forum, women in Canada—along with the United States, Cuba and Lithuania—make an average of 74 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn. That ranks this country 30 out of 145 listed countries for the size of our wage gap.
Even in the top-ranked countries, the outlook is grim. Wage disparity in Iceland, the most equal of all the countries, still averages 88 cents on the dollar. We have a long way to go. Experts suggest it will take well over a century of progress before the average pay for both men and women is equal.
And yet women are still, overwhelmingly relied upon by corporations to be the top consumers. Women are expected to buy and use hair dyes, shampoos, conditioners and products that are more costly. To use creams and salves on their faces and bodies, to wear makeup, to endlessly remove body hair.
Women are expected to wear new and trendy clothing to work, are envied for having no hair out of place and wearing expensive heels and having their nails perfectly manicured.
And while this seems like a relic of a sentiment, it still exists. Women still feel the pressure to do this to look professional, to be attractive to their partners.
And corporations keep playing along, breeding new generations of girls whose options are sexualized when shopping for clothing and colour-coded when shopping for toys—pink is still for girls, and blue for boys.
One might hope the western world would be on the cusp of change. That someday soon, women will be viewed as people, and not by their gender. That girls would be viewed as children, and not inundated with tight, short clothing and miles and miles of pink.
But we all have to invest in that change, refusing to buy what those corporations keep making, voting with our dollar. And sometimes that choice just makes financial sense—choosing the less expensive product. Especially for those who only have 74 cents for every dollar that’s charged.
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