I went to Gozo a couple of weeks ago and as usual, once I had gotten settled in, I realised that I had left half of my health and beauty necessities at home. One reprimanding best friend later, I went to the nearest supermarket in search of razors and I was sincerely puzzled about what greeted me.

Much has been made of the British ‘Tampon Tax’ which sees sanitary products being taxed as luxury items but beyond that, I had thought little of this conundrum till I was faced with two near-identical packets of razors with entirely different prices. The packaging was almost exactly the same, the number of blades on each razor head was the same; it was just the colour which was different. Apparently, it costs you around a euro more to buy pink products than it does blue and upon carrying out some research I realised that it’s not because pink plastic costs more to produce.

Women pay 13 per cent more than men for the same category of personal care products

According to the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, women pay 13 per cent more than men for the same category of personal care products simply because they are targeted at them. The same goes for clothes. The prices of the latter are sometimes so disproportionate that some women even go so far as to buy their jumpers from the men’s section just to save money. Even toys aimed at girls cost seven per cent more (because it’s important to start the gender imbalance as young as possible).

While I won’t be opting to buy the awful lemongrass shower gel aimed at men anytime soon, primarily because I don’t want to smell like a bad men’s deodorant commercial, that day, I reached for the blue razors out of principle rather than to save money. It’s time we all woke up and learnt how to subvert a system which is exploiting us based on gender, offering basic necessities at inflated prices based purely upon product colour variation and marketing techniques. Wanting equality is not enough if you do nothing to enforce your position. It was a really small thing I did that day, but maybe next time you’re at the shops, you should reach for the blue razors too.