# Charging Women Less Than Men: Is This Legal? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 23, 2015, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355 "2015-04-23T13:26:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/41 "2015-04-24T04:00:55Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > No, you are looking at it wrong. The price being charged to women is the market price. When they sell to men, they get a 31.5% mark-up! Whole thing is a marketing strategy: they wouldn’t have sold much to men anyway since men aren’t much in the market for arty knicknacks. They have just come up with a gimmick that will get them a boatload of free publicity and buyers who will buy to show solidarity with their “Right On!” cause. ---
**Author:** ![Marion\_Wormer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d07c76/32.png) [@Marion\_Wormer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marion_Wormer)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/42 "2015-04-24T11:10:29Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > Check at your dry cleaner, how much to clean your shirt vs how much to clean your wife’s shirt. > > Been that way an awful long time, so I’m doubting it’s illegal. It is illegal in a couple of cities. Either D.C. or Arlington. Not that anyone pays attention to the law. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/43 "2015-04-24T13:01:49Z")
> [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > Back in the early 1990s, I got that excuse from my former dry-cleaner. He told me that women’s shirts are smaller than men’s, and require “smaller” machinery. That’s hard to understand. There are as many women in the world as men. Maybe it’s men’s shirts which are bigger than women’s and require “bigger” machinery. It’s possible that this guy didn’t know what the rationale was, and did it because it was accepted industry practice. > [@](#): > > I pointed out that my boyfriend’s shirt and my shirt were the same size (I’m 5’9" and weighed about 140# at the time), and that I took a larger size than the smallest man’s dress shirt size. Both were plain cotton dress shirts (I don’t do ruffles or pin-tucks or any of that froofraw). So other than the side the buttons are on, how were they different again? I don’t think this is a valid counter-argument. Let’s suppose in theory that women’s shirts are more likely to have “ruffles or pintucks or any of that froofraw” than men’s shirts. On average, the cleaner cleaning women’s shirts is going to have a harder time with them than with men’s shirts. But it’s not practical to make a separate price for every individual shirt based on a custom assessment of that particular shirt. Making a separate price for women’s shirts is just a way of capturing the overall average increased cost. Or what other reason do you think it might be? Dry cleaners dislike women and deliberately price-gouge them? [If your shirt was identical to a men’s shirt, how did the guy know it was a women’s shirt to begin with? My wife makes virtually all dry-cleaning visits in my family, and I don’t think they ever assume my clothing is hers.] ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/44 "2015-04-24T13:30:27Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > how did the guy know it was a women’s shirt to begin with? The buttons are on the other side. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/45 "2015-04-24T14:06:47Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing. When a family has to take a career hit, it’s most likely the lower earner who is going to take the brunt. > > We don’t know what “life choices” women would make if they had equal career prospects. We do know that when workplaces became open to women, women certainly didn’t stay away. Woman are more likely to have lower paying jobs, like teachers or secretaries. They’re also more likely to work part time, so they have more time to be home with the kids. Within the same job, there’s no pay gap. A male teacher is not going to earn more than a female teacher, unless it’s due to seniority or some other factor. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/46 "2015-04-24T14:08:09Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > I don’t think this is a valid counter-argument. Let’s suppose in theory that women’s shirts are more likely to have “ruffles or pintucks or any of that froofraw” than men’s shirts. On average, the cleaner cleaning women’s shirts is going to have a harder time with them than with men’s shirts. But it’s not practical to make a separate price for every individual shirt based on a custom assessment of that particular shirt. Making a separate price for women’s shirts is just a way of capturing the overall average increased cost. There doesn’t have to be a separate price for each shirt - only two prices, one for shirts that can be machine pressed and one for those than cannot. Regardless of which side the buttons are on. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/47 "2015-04-24T14:13:12Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > Woman are more likely to have lower paying jobs, like teachers or secretaries. They’re also more likely to work part time, so they have more time to be home with the kids. Within the same job, there’s no pay gap. A male teacher is not going to earn more than a female teacher, unless it’s due to seniority or some other factor. Do you have evidence for that? Ida my understanding there are differences even within the same job title. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/48 "2015-04-24T15:31:44Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > The buttons are on the other side. And left-handed ironers are rarer and so can demand higher wages. Why does everyone have to suspect some kind of conspiracy? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/49 "2015-04-24T15:35:25Z")
Uh, what? ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/50 "2015-04-24T16:39:02Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > And left-handed ironers are rarer and so can demand higher wages. > > Why does everyone have to suspect some kind of conspiracy? How does that even make sense? I suspect dry cleaners have the number of left/right handed irons that correlate with their volume. I don’t think any dry cleaner has to dispatch out women’s shirts to some kind of ultra-rare, ultra-premium women’s specific ironing facility. This is standard in-house equipment. In DC they charge the same, and dry cleaners don’t seem to be short on business. ---
**Author:** ![typoink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/51 "2015-04-24T16:50:46Z")
> [@Doctor\_Why\_Bother](#): > > I was under the impression that the 76 - 100 pay gap thing was…well, in a word, bullshit. Isn’t nearly all of it accounted for by differing life choices men and women make? It’s messier than that, unfortunately. There was a report a few years back that, in many cases, the differences in equal pay for same jobs at large companies were accounted for by “life choices,” particularly maternity leave. That is a fuzzy issue in itself (I believe there’s some questions about the scope and reliability of those reports), but there’s also other factors. One of the other big ones is that men negotiate for salary more. This is a tough one, but women see their job security and hirability as lower, so they have less negotiation leverage. There also is still legitimate evidence of hiring discrimination as well as society still undervaluing “female jobs” (leading to pay gaps for arguably equivalent-but-not-identical work). It’s not at simple as the old feminist cliche any more, but it’s also not a solved issue. Like everything involving gender and racial discrimination, it sucks. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/52 "2015-04-24T16:52:59Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Do you have evidence for that? Ida my understanding there are differences even within the same job title. Not to derail this further, but according to this [study (pdf)](http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf) commissioned by the dept of labor: > [@](#): > > There are observable differences in the attributes of men and women that account for most of the wage gap. Statistical analysis that includes those variables has produced results that collectively account for between 65.1 and 76.4 percent of a raw gender wage gap of 20.4 percent, and thereby leave an adjusted gender wage gap that is between 4.8 and 7.1 percent. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/53 "2015-04-24T18:20:27Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > Not to derail this further, but according to this [study (pdf)](http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf) commissioned by the dept of labor: Yep, the\* real \*wage gap is rather small. Mind you, it’s still nothing to ignore. Included in that was the fact that men usually have more seniority in a job, thus higher pay. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/54 "2015-04-24T18:30:24Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > Not to derail this further, but according to this [study (pdf)](http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf) commissioned by the dept of labor: To be clear, that report does not say that “4.8 and 7.1 percent” is the amount of the discrepancy which has no conceivable explanation and is therefore likely the result of discrimination. To the contrary, it says that some amount of that remaining unexplained gap is likely due to factors that were too difficult to measure and model, e.g. non-wage compensation. [There are also other factors not mentioned in that report. For example, men tend to commute further to work than women do. These commutes generally result in higher paying jobs than they would otherwise have.] ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/55 "2015-04-24T18:44:40Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > To be clear, that report does not say that “4.8 and 7.1 percent” is the amount of the discrepancy which has no conceivable explanation and is therefore likely the result of discrimination. To the contrary, it says that some amount of that remaining unexplained gap is likely due to factors that were too difficult to measure and model, e.g. non-wage compensation. Right. The study is not necessarily the whole story, but it is at least an attempt to be quantitative instead of “it’s probably because women take time off to have babies or something”. ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/56 "2015-04-24T19:46:21Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > And left-handed ironers are rarer and so can demand higher wages. > > Why does everyone have to suspect some kind of conspiracy? > [@even\_sven](#): > > How does that even make sense? I suspect dry cleaners have the number of left/right handed irons that correlate with their volume. I don’t think any dry cleaner has to dispatch out women’s shirts to some kind of ultra-rare, ultra-premium women’s specific ironing facility. This is standard in-house equipment. > > In DC they charge the same, and dry cleaners don’t seem to be short on business. Woooosh! ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/57 "2015-04-24T21:17:12Z")
But “life choices” don’t happen in a vacuum. It’s not surprising that men don’t take a lot of maternity leave, given that they are rarely offered maternity leave. Given that working women still do hours and hours more housework and childcare than their partners, it’s not surprising that they have fewer hours to do extra work. Given that women are often in jobs that pay less, it’s not surprising that they get to be the ones who stay home when the kid is sick. We can’t just say “Oh, women love doing housework and raising the baby alone and working crappy jobs.” There are structural, rational reasons why it works out for a family to make these choices beyond what women would voluntarily choose in a vacuum. And there are structural and economic reasons why men don’t make the parts of those choices that are pretty universally appealing-- like spending some time with their newborns. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/58 "2015-04-24T22:13:24Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > But “life choices” don’t happen in a vacuum. It’s not surprising that men don’t take a lot of maternity leave, given that they are rarely offered maternity leave. Given that working women still do hours and hours more housework and childcare than their partners, it’s not surprising that they have fewer hours to do extra work. Given that women are often in jobs that pay less, it’s not surprising that they get to be the ones who stay home when the kid is sick. > > We can’t just say “Oh, women love doing housework and raising the baby alone and working crappy jobs.” There are structural, rational reasons why it works out for a family to make these choices beyond what women would voluntarily choose in a vacuum. And there are structural and economic reasons why men don’t make the parts of those choices that are pretty universally appealing-- like spending some time with their newborns. It wasn’t so many years ago that a man taking paternity leave, or staying home with a sick child, could potentially be a firing offense. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2015, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/59 "2015-04-25T16:25:25Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > But “life choices” don’t happen in a vacuum. It’s not surprising that men don’t take a lot of maternity leave, given that they are rarely offered maternity leave. Given that working women still do hours and hours more housework and childcare than their partners, it’s not surprising that they have fewer hours to do extra work. Given that women are often in jobs that pay less, it’s not surprising that they get to be the ones who stay home when the kid is sick. > > We can’t just say “Oh, women love doing housework and raising the baby alone and working crappy jobs.” There are structural, rational reasons why it works out for a family to make these choices beyond what women would voluntarily choose in a vacuum. And there are structural and economic reasons why men don’t make the parts of those choices that are pretty universally appealing-- like spending some time with their newborns. There are often rational reasons why things work out the way they do for an individual family - but that doesn’t mean that earlier life choices didn’t have an effect on those structural and economic reasons. Women don’t necessarily love doing housework and raising the baby alone and of course it makes sense that the person who earns less will stay home when the baby is sick. But none of that explains how the woman ending up earning less to begin with. “Working women do hours and hours more housework and childcare than their partners” might explain why they don’t earn more- but it doesn’t explain why they accept that behavior from their partner to begin with. The answer might be because they already are the lower earners _before_ they marry and have children - but that then moves the question to why they were the lower earners even before there were children in the picture. It also doesn’t explain why men who _can_ take child care leaves with no more negative consequences than their wives still don’t. \* Some of that might be explained by more women choosing to enter lower paying fields (or the lower paying sectors of a particular field) because they want to have children at some point , but even making those choices doesn’t mean you are fated to be the lower earner of a couple. - I have worked for two government employers over the last 28 years. Both provided generous amounts of paid leave and allowed paid vacation leave to accumulate to at least 8 weeks. One provided 7 months of job-protected child-care leave and the other allowed up to 4 years of job protection. The only difference between male and female employees was that female employees who gave birth could use sick leave (which could accumulate even higher than 8 weeks) for the time that they were actually medically unable to work. In 28 years I saw exactly one man take more than two weeks off for the birth/adoption of a child and a few take off for sick children - even though in many, many cases their wives worked for the same employer, in the same title and earned the same amount of money. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2015, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355/60 "2015-04-26T00:46:28Z")
Anyway, going back to the original question, is there a simple yes-or-no answer as to whether this is illegal or not? Surely charging black people more than white people, for instance, would be instantly shot down in some legal challenge, no? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charging-women-less-than-men-is-this-legal/718355.md?page=4)