Study: Women Clipped, Taken To Cleaners Barbershops, Dry Cleaners Charge Women More, Legal Remedy Sought
The Price is Not Right.
That’s the name of the new study showing a woman in Washington state gets charged an average of $5.56 more for a haircut than a man, while she also pays on average $1.63 more to get her white cotton shirt dry cleaned.
So what is going to be done? Sen. Pat Thibaudeau, D-Seattle, once again plans to propose legislation to punish businesses that charge women more than men for identical services. Violators could face up to a $10,000 fine.
Thibaudeau sponsored a similar bill last year. It didn’t pass, but the Senate voted 26-22 to study the problem.
Sen. Harold Hochstatter, R-Moses Lake, thinks the bill is a bad idea.
“Brave men died for our liberties, not for the price of our haircuts,” Hochstatter said.
“I guess it’s one of those things where you ask, ‘Why should government have to rule?”’ he said, after pointing out he doesn’t worry about the barber because he’s bald. “If you don’t like your barber or your dry cleaner, you don’t sue them. You go into competition with them.”
The study divided the state into six regions, calling hair dressers and dry cleaning salons in each area.
“If Joe Blow or Jane Blow comes in off the street, we wanted to know what they were going to be charged,” said Jonathan Seib, staff council for the nonpartisan Senate Commerce and Labor Committee that headed the study.
Seib was in charge of calling and asking about haircuts and dry cleaning services for men. A woman from the council got the female quotes. Neither of them identified themselves as state employees doing a study.
“We are also consumers,” Seib said.
The study did keep away from asking car dealers about prices. Staffers feared having to use deception to find out if gender bias existed in that arena, too.
A similar bill was passed in 1995 in California, where the penalty for violating the law is an award to the consumer of $1,000, or up to three times the amount of actual damages and attorney’s fees. xxxx THE STUDY A total of 180 salons were called, with 60 percent of them charging women more than men for a basic haircut. When asked, both Jonathan Seib, staff council for the nonpartisan Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, and the female caller said their hair was “above the collar.” For dry cleaners, the study showed that of the 70 establishments called, 66 percent charged women more than men to have a basic white cotton shirt cleaned. If asked about the size of the shirt, the female caller would say eight. Seib was never asked.