Gender Discrimination in Global Clothing Tariffs

James Scott

Global Policy, 2025, vol. 16, issue 5, 1063-1074

Abstract: There is increasing recognition of women suffering a ‘pink tax’, paying higher prices for (near) identical products than those marketed to men. One potential cause of this is governments charging different import tariffs on men's and women's clothing, facilitated by the fact that the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS) splits all apparel by gender. This article examines four questions: why are the HS codes disaggregated by gender in this one sector; to what extent do countries charge different tariffs on men's and women's clothing; where they do, who is being discriminated against; and how is the level and direction of discrimination changing over time? The analysis finds that around three quarters of countries do not discriminate in their tariff schedules. However, among those that do, contrary to the expectations of the pink tax literature states overall employ higher tariffs on men's clothes than women's, though there is some evidence that this is reversing over time and the result is heavily driven by a few outlier countries. The conclusion sets out some routes to tackling this discrimination if moves to mainstream gender into trade policy are to amount to more than rhetoric.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.70070

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:glopol:v:16:y:2025:i:5:p:1063-1074

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1758-5880

Access Statistics for this article

Global Policy is currently edited by David Held, Patrick Dunleavy and Eva-Maria Nag

More articles in Global Policy from London School of Economics and Political Science Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().