Inflation is higher for women

This morning, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has updated the inflation rate to?9.4 per cent, from 9.1 per cent in May. Steeply rising prices are not felt equally, however, and families in financial hardship are already facing a situation in which they have?no disposable income?after paying their monthly bills.

That the?cost-of-living crisis?is leaving poorer people with harder choices might seem obvious – unless, perhaps, you are a Conservative leadership candidate. Less obvious, however, are the ways in which rising prices disproportionately affect women.

Figures from the ONS for the year up to May 2022 show that items marketed at women have tended to rise in price by more than those aimed at men.

Some price rises have been similar. For instance, men and women’s T-Shirts have risen by 17 and 16 per cent on average respectively. But women’s branded jeans have gone up twice as much – by 22 per cent – as men’s, which have gone up by 11 per cent. And while women’s boots have seen prices jump on average by 36 per cent, the ONS registered a 13 per cent drop in the price of walking or hiking boots.

This difference “reflects the ‘pink tax’ on women’s consumer goods,” says Johnna Montgomerie, professor of international political economy at King’s College London – a reference to the fact that products marketed at women usually cost more than products aimed at men. “The price will go up for products the market knows women will sacrifice elsewhere to get,” she says.

The “pink tax” is evident beyond clothing, too. While electric razors, chiefly used by men, have dropped in price by 13 per cent, electric hair styling appliances, chiefly used by women, have gone up by 30 per cent.

Women are held to higher standards of grooming and beauty than men, and these price differentials show the effect this has on demand, and therefore prices. It is a question of “what retailers can get away with,” says Dr Sara Reis, deputy director of the Women’s Budget Group. “There is higher pressure on women to look good in order to appear professional... and so there may be less withdrawing of demand on women’s clothes and the beauty market even when prices go up.”

Cheaper products, including supermarket own-brand lines, have also been rising at higher rates, the ONS data shows, and this also affects women disproportionately, because women tend to have lower incomes, and make up the vast majority of single-parent families.

One of the reasons for that wage gap is, of course, the prohibitive cost of childcare in this country –?famously the third-most expensive?in the developed world. This problem long predates the crisis; recent analysis by the?Trades Union Congress?found that nursery fees for under twos went up 44 per cent from 2010 to 2021. Since 2021, this has gone up by 4.1 per cent, according to the charity Coram Family and Childcare.

Men also pay for childcare, of course, but women tend to be the ones who stay home in a heterosexual couple that can’t afford to pay for it. And, as mentioned above, they also make up the majority of single parents, and they are more likely to be poor. Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that 49 per cent of children in single-parent families were in poverty in 2019-20, compared to 25 per cent in?two-parent families.

Having the third-most expensive childcare in the OECD has all sorts of unintended consequences. A survey the?New Statesman?conducted this year found that 70 per cent of respondents said childcare costs were a significant reason that mothers choose to be stay-at-home parents. Another poll by Pregnant then Screwed, the lobbying group, found that?60 per cent of women?said the cost of childcare influenced their decision to have an abortion.

“The government’s refusal to substantively review how the UK’s childcare system works,” says Dr. Reis, “and to fund it properly, is an illustrative example of this government’s blindness when it comes to the disproportionate impact of the cost-of-living and income crisis on women.”

Further reading

• “This might be worse than Covid”: Shevaun Haviland on why businesses need help to survive inflation
• “The price of getting to your job is astronomical”: Britain’s cost-of-working crisis
• How “dead-end work” reinforces the gender pay gap

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