California and Pink Tax
A year earlier than the New York law, the Californian Governor of the time in 1996, Pete Wilson, had signed into effect the Gender Tax Repeal Act of 1995. This act required all merchants that provided services to men and women to not have price differences if the service provided would take the same time, skill, and cost to provide to the people.
What’s more, this act aimed to hit all the industries that had these price differences between genders, including clothing alterations, haircuts, car repairs, dry cleaning, and many other services, but it did not hit on the product price differences.
The author of the bill, Assemblywoman Jackie Speier, told the papers back in 1996 that this bill was the first of its kind, and it is significant because it was the first time the term “gender tax” was used to describe this type of price discrimination based on gender. While this is a significant win that is worth noting, it is also important to point out that an earlier version of this bill that also included the different prices for products aimed at different genders was not able to pass.
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