| The study from which the article draws is also posted on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10785107 I'm going to copy some of the comments I made over there. Hopefully this is acceptable. The study does not say there is price discrimination, but it heavily implies it. The WSJ article does say there is discrimination. First of all, I think the article falls into some kind of Political Correctness trap by claiming that certain products are for boys and others are for girls. Why couldn't a boy want the pink scooter? Why couldn't a girl want red? Building on that, if we see the pink one as "girls" and the red one as "boys" then it does look like discrimination. However, if we view the red one as "neutral/base color" and the pink one as a less popular "color option" it seems less like discrimination and more like paying for a unique customization. Do we know there isn't a blue scooter priced the same as pink? The conclusion (of the study) states: > DCA found, on average, that women pay approximately 7 percent more than men for similar products. Products’ price differences based on gender are largely inescapable for female consumers simply due to the product offerings available in the market. This seems fundamentally contradictory to me. If the products are sufficiently similar but priced differently, why would women buy the "women's version?" What makes it "inescapable?" If product A is so much better than product B, such that buying Product A is "inescapable," I'd expect a difference of more than 7% in price. The Wall Street Journal seems to draw the reasonable conclusion in its headline: Women should buy the "men's product." |