Gender-based pricing has been documented in the United States since at least the mid-twentieth century, but the pink tax has only been around by that name since roughly 2015. The practice itself, charging women more for goods and services comparable to those sold to men, is decades older than the label. The first government study to quantify it was published in 1994, the first state law banning it took effect in 1995, and the phrase entered mainstream conversation twenty years after that, when a New York City report gave the pattern a name that stuck.
Pricing Practices That Came Before the Name
Service industries were charging women more as a matter of routine long before anyone thought to call it a tax. Dry cleaners are the most cited example. A woman’s cotton blouse often cost significantly more to launder than a man’s nearly identical button-down shirt, with shop owners pointing to hand pressing, smaller equipment sizes, and fabric differences as the reasons. Whether those justifications held up varied from business to business, but the pricing stuck for decades because no law prohibited it.
Hair salons built a similar structure by splitting price menus by gender rather than by the time or complexity of the cut. Consumer surveys have consistently shown women paying roughly two to three times what men pay, even for comparable short cuts. The industry’s standard defense was that women’s cuts involved more technique, though that reasoning weakens when a woman’s simple bob is compared to a man’s textured fade that takes the same amount of chair time. These norms became embedded enough that most customers treated them as a natural cost of being female rather than a business decision.
The pattern reached beyond grooming. A Northwestern University field experiment found auto repair shops quoted women higher prices than men when callers indicated they had no idea what a repair should cost. Women received average quotes about $23 higher than men for the same radiator replacement. When callers mentioned the market price up front, the gap disappeared, which suggests the markup relied on perceived ignorance rather than any real cost difference.
1994: The First Study to Put a Number on It
Advocacy work began moving the conversation from anecdote to data in the early 1990s. The California Assembly Office of Research conducted a landmark study in 1994 examining the cost of living for women versus men. It concluded that adult women effectively paid a gender tax of roughly $1,351 a year, totaling about $15 billion across all women in California. That figure gave legislators something concrete to point at, and the following year California became the first state to act.
1995: The First Law
The California Gender Tax Repeal Act of 1995, codified as Civil Code Section 51.6, prohibited any business from charging different prices for similar services based on the customer’s gender. Price differences tied to legitimate factors like time, difficulty, or cost of providing the service were still allowed; gender alone could not be the reason. The law also required businesses like hair salons and dry cleaners to post their price lists in at least 14-point boldface type, along with a sign in at least 24-point boldface informing customers of their rights. A business that failed to correct a violation within 30 days of written notice faced a $1,000 civil penalty, and customers could sue for actual damages and attorney fees.
That law had a significant limit that would not be addressed for nearly three decades: it covered services only, not products.
2015: The Report That Named It
The study that pushed the issue into mainstream awareness came twenty years after California acted. In 2015, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs published From Cradle to Cane: The Cost of Being a Female Consumer, analyzing more than 800 products across five industries. It found women paid 13% more than men for personal care products, 8% more for adult clothing, 8% more for senior and home health care, 7% more for toys and accessories, and 4% more for children’s clothing. Across all categories combined, women’s products cost an average of 7% more than comparable men’s products.
The report is widely credited with popularizing the phrase “pink tax” and pushing the issue into national news cycles and legislative debates. That is the year the term itself can reasonably be dated to in general usage, even though the underlying practices were much older.
The Slow Legislative Response Since 2015
The federal Pink Tax Repeal Act was first introduced in Congress during the 2015-2016 session. It has been reintroduced in multiple sessions since, most recently as H.R. 3374 in May 2025 during the 119th Congress, sponsored by Representative Norma Torres of California with roughly two dozen co-sponsors. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. If passed, it would direct the Federal Trade Commission to treat gender-based pricing of substantially similar products and services as an unfair or deceptive practice. It has not become law in any of its introductions to date.
State action has moved faster than federal action, but still slowly. New York enacted General Business Law Section 391-U, effective September 30, 2020, prohibiting retailers, manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors from charging different prices for substantially similar goods or services based on the gender they are marketed to. Violations carry fines of up to $250 for a first offense and up to $500 for each subsequent violation, and the law gives consumers the right to request a complete written price list from any service provider.
California finally extended its own law to products through Assembly Bill 1287 in 2022, closing the gap that had existed since 1995. The statute now bars businesses from charging different prices for substantially similar goods when the only difference is the gender of the intended customer.
Where Things Stand in 2026
Gender-based pricing has been visible in American commerce for at least seventy years, measurable since 1994, illegal in one state since 1995, and known as the pink tax for about a decade. As of 2026, no federal law bans the practice nationwide. Enforcement remains a patchwork of state laws, and most states have no specific prohibition on gendered pricing at all. The practice has outlasted the first study by more than thirty years and the naming of the phenomenon by more than ten, which is much of the reason the conversation is still ongoing.