This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, May 14th, 2004. I'm Caleb Brown.

How should we approach the question of the Pink Tax? The notion that women pay more for basically

identical products and services just because they're women has spurred claims

of sexism the Cato's Ryan Bourne explores why the pink tax is largely a myth in his

new book The War on Prices available today. I don't know if this is just a myth or whether this is just a myth or whether

this is just common knowledge which myths often are common knowledge. I remember years ago a debate

online I can't remember where about the prices that men and women pay to get their hair done.

And the fights were, well, you know, women are more particular than men about how their hair looks or women have longer

hair it takes longer to cut a woman's hair and leaving that particular example aside,

how would we even get at the question

of whether or not, in a much broader sense,

women pay more for stuff that they need that are you know maybe particular to their

needs than men do. Well you have to do quite careful economic analysis and you know this whole debate really erupted in the

mid 2010s when Bill de Blasio's New York City Department of Consumer Affairs

ran a report in which they looked at 397 pairs of items which they'd identified as

substantially similar products but marketed towards men

or marketed towards women and often the products marketed towards women

were in pink or kind of gendered packaging,

so hence the term the pink tax came about, because what they found was that on average,

you know, whether this is looking across adult clothing

whether it's looking at children's toys

whether it's looking at personal care products

...