Gender-based price discrimination in the United States

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Gender-based price discrimination is a form of economic discrimination that involves price disparities for identical goods or services based on an individual's gender, and may reinforce negative stereotypes about both women and men in matching markets. Race and class-based price discrimination also exists.^[1] Acts of discrimination often have legal ramifications, but whether gendered price disparities prove an intent to discriminate or constitute illegal discrimination can become a legal inquiry. Policies against gender-based price discrimination is not universally approved and enforced in the United States.^[2] Gender-based price discrimination is also described as pink tax.

Gender-based price discrimination exists in many industries including insurance, dry cleaning, hairdressing, nightclubs, clothing, personal care products, discount prices and consumption taxes. A study by the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection found that, on average, women's products cost seven percent more than similar products for men.^[3] The utilization of big data in business also apply to personalized price discrimination which involves the factor of a consumer's gender.^[4]

Whether gender-based pricing is a form of discrimination, and whether it is illegal has been of a debate in the United States and European Union since the 1990s.^[5] Opponents of the enforcement of laws against gender-based pricing make two arguments. They suggest that courts should dismiss cases involving gender-based pricing because the injury to the plaintiff is so inconsequential that they should not be entitled to relief. They also point to economic efficiency as a justification.^[6] In response to the economic efficiency argument, scholars suggest that gender-based pricing should be prohibited on moral grounds, stating that gender should not be used as a proxy for other characteristics, especially when based on stereotypes.^[6][7]