13. Battle of the Prices: Is It Ever Fair to Charge One Sex More?

            Bourree Lam wrote an article about pricing and if it is fair that sometimes one sex is charged more than the other for the same thing. She opens the article talking about how a hairdresser she went to changed male and female haircut prices to the same amount. She asked him why he made this change, and he said it was because he realized it took the same amount of time for both sexes. She then says economists call this discrimination: “selling the same thing to two different people at different prices, because one is willing to pay more.” She then says sometimes charging one group more is justified because the service is more expensive for one gender, such as cutting a woman’s hair might require more time or skill. She then gives an example of European insurance companies who charged women more because they lived longer. This, however, was changed when the European Court of Justice required insurance companies to charge the same amount to both genders. In the Unites States, gender discrimination is illegal in many states, but different states have different laws for it. There is no federal law that prohibits gender discrimination, but since 2000, 43 states have prohibited it. Despite common thought, women aren’t always charged more. Manicures, for example, are actually more expensive for men, because they require more work. Nightclubs charge men more to balance the events for purposes of dating. In addition, as concert-goer and marketing worker Christopher Sun said, 9 out of 10 men are usually willing to pay more ($5-20) if it guarantees the dance floor will be full of girls and the music will be good. She closes her article by saying gender price discrimination is wrong in either direction, and she would rather not have a free drink in ladies’ might than to have one but have to pay more for dry cleaning.

            The article was informative and critical. Lam uses specific information from studies, nightclub data, and professionals from different fields to add more credibility to her article. In addition to that, she tells of an average man and woman and their thoughts on different prices for nightclub entries. This evidence shows the reader how average people view the situation, and it makes the reader empathize with what the person said. It was also a critical article because she closes her essay by saying she does not agree with gender price discrimination. Her diction is informal to make it easy for the reader to understand what her message is and to persuade them into thinking the same way she does.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/battle-of-the-prices-is-it-ever-fair-to-charge-one-sex-more/381546/?single_page=true