The pink tax stirs feelings in India, seen as gender prejudice

The additional cost paid by women for products with the same size and quantity with respect to their versions for men, known as the pink tax, stirred feelings in India this Wednesday with a business leader calling for a boycott of products.

The invisible tax falls on feminine hygiene items, such as deodorants, disposable razors or hair shampoos, services in salons, which have a higher cost than men who went up to a fifty% higher, as EFE was able to verify after visiting one of the main chains in New Delhi.

The debate grew this Wednesday when the CEO of an Indian pharmaceutical firm, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, referred to this price disparity in a message on X along with an analysis video by Indian publicist Sanjay Arora.

“Pink tax! A shameful gender bias that women must respond to by avoiding such products!”wrote the executive director of Biocon.

Arora’s video, originally published on his Instagram account, which has more than a million views, also shows the difference in prices in various products intended for men and women in the Indian market.

“I discovered that it was actually the feminine products that had a higher price for the same type of product”Arora told EFE.

The list of these products ranges from lip balms, deodorants, razors to basic clothing items.

“For a lip balm from the same company and the same size, women end up paying 250 rupees (US$3.14), while men pay 165 (US$1.99). She is a cousin of 51.1%”, indicated the publicist, as part of one of the examples that stands out during the recording.

The same product, with practically the same quantity, fluctuates “between seven or eight percent to more than 100 percent sometimes,” Arora said.

The pink rate refers to the disparity in feminine products that are inflated based on their demand in the market.

This has placed an additional economic burden on women, who already face a salary disparity with lower incomes than their male counterparts. Added to this is the very low number of women who are part of the Indian workforce and receive formal payments, less than a 25%. Although the ‘pink tax’ is not considered an ethical practice, it is also not illegal in India.

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