Discount pricing for women: legal?

Factual Questions
21

The obvious problem there is that haircutters paid by the minute are likely to be rather slow.

But in fact the price here strongly correlates with the level of service that will be delivered, which lots of experience has shown isn’t - nor is expected to be - the same for men and women. Those who want something outside this scheme are free to negotiate for it. I’m going to guess that if a woman said “I’d like the same 4-minute haircut that you just gave that guy - at the same price” she’d probably get it. Whether she’d be happy with it is another question.

22

Then haircuts should be priced based on the length of hair. Or whatever. Really, it’s not my responsibility to think of alternatives for hair cutters. The fact is that they are discriminating. Following the stated prices to the letter, a woman with short hair is going to be charged more than a man with long hair. The fact that you’re the one who brought up the lawn mowing example only reinforces how asinine this is. Why shouldn’t I be charged based on the average lawn size of my neighborhood?

23

You can call it that - but the discrimination is closely tied to the level of service provided. They are not saying “You’re a woman, so you pay more than a man for the same thing” but rather “What women expect consistently takes more time and skill to deliver, so we charge more.”

IMO, the first would deserve to be called discrimination; the second not so much.

24

Hmmm… my wife goes to a place where even if she just gets a haircut, it takes half an hour, is carefully done by hand, and costs $45. I go to the locally franchise haircut place, tell them “number 2” and they buzz my whole scalp with number 2 clipper comb(?). Of course, there’s a significant area on top that they don’t have to worry about. Then they just tidy up around the ears and back, even throw in the eyebrow trim with a comband the clippers (my wife appreciates that - I don’t look like Brezhnev). In Canada, that’s $17; in NYC once last year, $12.

It’s the level of care. For John Edwards, it’s $400. Most women don’t want to save $30 by getting the military issue buzz, except maybe some in San Francisco.

Similarly for clothes - ask most guys what Chuck wore last week on Thursday, they wouldn’t have a clue. Ditto if you asked about what Sally wore, unless it was that low-cut bright red minidress with no bra. Women can usually tell you exactly what everyone was wearing. Guys don’t notice their clothes need ironing unless they really, really need ironing. Women are. Mens clothes are usually pretty basic, womens’ tend to have those ruffles, indents and outdents and other stuff that make things like ironing a pain. Hence, higher cost for more precise quality service.

However, for the exact same purchase or service - yes, it’s discriminatory. If you wouldn’t feel it’s right to charge blacks more than whites, or Jews more than Catholics, or Hispanic (legal) immigrants more than natural-born American citizens, then why would it be right to charge men more?

OTOH, technically separate washrooms are discriminatory too on that level, but nobody’s clamoring to change that.

it would be nice to allow you to for example, have a bar just for Englishmen, but the whole history of civil rights has shown that this option has been sufciently abuse that it’s in the country’s best interest to disallow certain discimination for the proper and harmonious functioning of the country.

25

The problem is when “tends to have” “might have” is 'expected to have" conflicts with actual reality. Why is it that when I, a woman, bring in a perfectly ordinary, ruffle free button down Oxford shirt, and am charged $5 for dry cleaning, while a man’s Oxford, button-down shirt can be done for as little as $2 at the same place?

And why is no one asking me whether I want some premium service that apparently ALL women automatically want? Because I don’t. I am fine with my clothes being more or less ironed ie, not visibly rumpled.

26

Really? How do they confirm presence of a vagina?

But seriously, what if an androgynous looking person tries to get cheap chocolate, a cheap drink, whatever. How does the merchant confirm sex?:dubious:
“Sorry, but I’ll need to be takin a peek in your bloomers”

27

Flat front?

28

[duplicate post removed]

29

[duplicate post removed]

30

But I don’t think I am discriminating against the men – instead of getting cheaper drinks they are getting a larger percentage of women in the bar than would otherwise be there. So without “ladies drink cheap night,” there wood be fewer women at the bar and the men still wouldn’t be getting cheaper drinks.

Follow? The way I see it “Ladies Night,” is a win/win for the business man as well as for the ladies and the men.

The underlying problem here, of course, is how far governement should be allowed to run your business.
To use your example, if I’m trying to attract, say “blacks” to my business, what can’t I charge them less? It’s my business. The whites would be mad at me and they won’t patronize me and that’s my problem.

And how about those signs that say, “We reserve the right to deny service to anyone?” If that’s legal than it’s a whole new ballgame we have here.
In the end the rules of capitalism would prevent discrimination much better than the goverenment. IMHO, anyway.

Regards,
Lou

Im not sure how to quote text here so bear with me please.
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31

There’s an old joke about the dry cleaner charging ladies more to clean and iron their shirts.

The punch line is that women expect it to be truly clean and nicely ironed. Men, not so much, and that therein lies the price difference.

32

I’m with LitWitLou 100% on the idea that an individual owner ought to be able to operate his business in any way he wants.

Large corporations, however, have repeatedly shown that some sort of societal or governmental control is needed when the people making the decisions are far removed from the direct consequences of those decisions, e.g., corporate bigwigs might intentionally pursue a policy that is likely to result in financial disaster for the business in the long-run but which will cause an immediate manipulation of stock prices from which they can personally profit.

Somewhere in the middle it gets murky regarding who should be regulated; two person partnerships, three partners, family owned incorporated business? Not an easy question … but to me, it seems absolutely clear that when the owner of a business is the only one (and his immediate family, to pick that nit in advance) who will gain or suffer from his business decisions, those decisions should be his to make without having to conform to societally imposed rules that intrude on his personal freedom in a misguided effort to bring about some warm-fuzzy nirvana state of perfect-sameness even if it means bringing everybody down to the level of least common denominator.

But then again, I’ve always had a problem with authority figures. :wink:

And by the way, the woman was having her oxford cloth button down shirt dry cleaned. The man had his washed. And even if that’s not the case, the woman is (or should be, in my perfect world) perfectly free to open her own dry cleaning business and charge men more than women … and let black Irish cross-dressers between the ages of 27 and 42 smoke in the shop, and refuse service to gay white women who weigh more than 177 pounds, and charge $400 to clean the turban of a Sikh and 99 cents to clean the turban of a Muslim.

33

For myself, I really don’t care whether “ladies nights” at bars are legal or not - I view them as very much to my benefit, as a straight dude.

However, I once worked with a gay fellow who made an interesting point. In his case, ladies nights amounted to him paying higher prices for drinks because he happened to be a dude, and he received no benefit at all from the increased numbers of women. He felt the unfairness of the ladies night thing, in other words, far more keenly than I did.

34

Look at the situation from both sides: “Women pay half-price” is the same as “Men pay double.” It’s like all the gas stations that, when told they couldn’t charge more for credit cards, raised the price by 4 cents and gave cash discounts.

The question isn’t whether it’s legal to provide discounts to a particular class. The question is whether it’s legal to charge different prices to customers based on their gender/race/religion/whatever.

35

I own a gas station and I don’t serve blacks. Why? Because most of the people who rob my store are black. It’s not discrimination, it’s just what I’ve come to expect from blacks.

It’s discrimination. You’re the one dressing it up.

36

How about a thought experiment: A man goes into a hair salon and carefully explains that he wants a full wash, blowdry, and perm with color highlights - and all for only the standard men’s haircut amount.

Will he succeed? By your theory it seems the salon will be happy to comply - discrimination in favor of men being their policy.

My theory is that they are trying to supply what their customers want at a fair price, and what they charge basically reflects their best attempt to do so.

37

Just because they wouldn’t abide by their discriminatory policy doesn’t mean that their policy isn’t discriminatory.

38

[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:34, topic:543042”]

Look at the situation from both sides: “Women pay half-price” is the same as “Men pay double.” It’s like all the gas stations that, when told they couldn’t charge more for credit cards, raised the price by 4 cents and gave cash discounts.

The question isn’t whether it’s legal to provide discounts to a particular class. The question is whether it’s legal to charge different prices to customers based on their gender/race/religion/whatever.
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First of all, HOORAY for those gas station owners. But bartenders can basically do the same thing.

First, we must dispel the notion that a bartender’s purpose is to make drinks. Wrong. Any idiot can be taught to make drinks. A bartender’s purpose is to make money. A good professional bartender will maximize profits for the bar’s owner while drawing good tips for himself.

There are many ways a good bartender can do this but lets discuss just the “Ladies Night” example.

Since we can all agree by now (I hope) that the more pretty women in a bar the more men will flock to it – we can agree that the bartender will offer pretty women free drinks more often than he would to men, or even to, shall we say, “unprepossesing” women.

Now here we have a case of discrimination not just based on gender, but also on physical appearance. Someone please explain to me how the government can legislate against that.

A good bartender sees that on Tuesday nights several cute female employees from the office building next door come in for a couple of hours to sip white wine and schmooz about men. Why I say that bartender will buy them a round or two, chat them up, maybe try to get them to bring a couple of friends and tell them he’ll let them play the jukebox for free.

Then he’ll tell a few of his best tipping male customers that Tuesday nights are jumpin’ with pretty women these days.

What you now have is a *de facto * ladies night – or at least a ladies happy hour.

And aren’t the following discriminitory?

“Kids get in free!” “Children under 12 eat for half-price!” “10% discount for senior citizens!” "College students 15% off with student ID!

Regards,
Lou

39

IANA lawyer, but AIUI no, they aren’t, or at least much less so than race and gender, because the latter are suspect classes for whom a higher standard against discrimination is held.

40

I don’t know about the rest, but I do know that when I had long hair and I would get it cut it cost a lot more then what it costs me now. I was paying close to what the women in the shop were paying, maybe a bit less, but then I never had it washed, blow dried or anything like that. So hair dressers don’t charge less for women, they charge less for short hair.