Hey, welcome to be on the scenes. This is the podcast. It goes deeper into segments that originally aired on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Like, be honest, scene this, this is what you think about this podcast. This is what this podcast is. Like. All right, Like you have a party. You go to the party. It's a good party. After that party, you go to the hotel lobby and it's like at four o'clock in the morning, eating greasy food. You eating waffle house, You're telling all your deep, dark secret. Somebody started working on top of the piano. Then the hotel manager come over and be like, I'm in the y'all actually stay at this hotel. Let me be like, shut your hate NASA. Then the police sho. That's basically what this podcast is. We're the party that happens after the original party that is The Daily Show. I'm Roy Wood Jr. Today we're gonna be talking about the pink tax and the outside costs of just being a woman. Let's play the clipp being a woman can cost you, apparently in average or thanks to gender price discrimination, if you're a woman, just about everything costs you more than similar products. Marketing for men it's called the pay tacks. Research has shown women pay more than men forty two percent of the time. In fact, a recent study shows that starts from the time you were born until the day you die. Today, I'm joined by Daily Show correspondent Daisi Lighting and segment director Stacy Angels, who both created this segment for the show. Ladies. Hello, Hi Roy, Hello Roy joining us. Also, we are very lucky to have Congresswoman Jackie Spear, who was in the original piece with Daisy, and this congresswoman has been fighting gender discrimination for twenty thirty years. Congress Woman speA, welcome to beyond the scenes. It is my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you for letting me be a man and this woman. Too bad. We don't rule the world though, just because we're ruling this particular podcast. That's the problem. We're not ruling the world yet. I would be honest. I felt uncomfortable host in this episode. I was like, dazy need the guest host. I don't want to get in trouble. You're doing great, Roy. Okay, before we do anything, we have to define what the issue is. So Daisy Stacy, let's start off off the top. What is the pink tax. Well, the pink tax refers to the markup on goods and services that are specifically being targeted to women and gender price discrimination. So, Roy, you everything you buy is cheaper than the same products we want to buy. Okay. So if we both bought deodorant, and your and mine is Man deodorant and yours is Woman deodorant, same brand, you're paying more than me, is what you're saying, Stacy. It's more expensive for us to smell good than for you, which is why Stacy and I refuse to smell good. Yeah, you're lucky this is on zoom, Roy, because you don't want to smell this. Okay, let us back in the studio. Yes, okay, nothing to do with COVID. So congress Woman, Congresswoman, I'm sorry, I apologize for both of them. Um. Why why does the pink tax exists? And more importantly, how do manufacturers and retailers justify this tax? Well, the pink tax exists because it's a form of gender discrimination. It's not just about pink. It's about the fact that women's products cost more than men's products. Um, when they are basically identical. Um, it is important for us to address this, because, as we all know, women still make less than men. Uh For every dollar mannerns, a woman makes a d two cents. If you look at women of color, it's even more egregious. And that's real money when everything is said and done. Are there other examples of this other than deodorant? Because, and I'll be honest, as a man, this isn't something that you would normally think about because you're not buying a lot of women's items unless you are a committed strong man in a relationship like I am, so you're not aware of this. Give me what what other items other than I have heard that women get worse deals on cars. But let me give you some products that kind of make the case. All right, So this is um Dove deodorant for men and women. And as you can see here, for a four pack, a woman is gonna pay nineteen dollars and thirty nine cents. The man is gonna pay thirteen dollars and fifty eight cents. That's just deodor Let's move on. How about probiotics for women? UM seventy nine seventy nine for a man? All right, this like the price is right? Let me guess there is the price is wrong though, that's the problem, always wrong. So the price is right needs to have a gender separate episode maybe so huh. So look at this. These are bibs, right, bibbs for boys, bibbs for girls, A dollar more for the girls bibs. Now, wait, there's more, what there's more? Oh my god? These are kids diapers, the kids diapers, thirty seven dollars for the girl, thirty three dollars for the boy. But I'll show you the same discrimination. Supers and boys have more happening to fill out diaper space. So really square footage, it should cost more for the men, right, probably because they need more absorbents, They need more absorbent material, so it's right right now. We did this same study two or three years ago, um, and they were egregious around children's toys. So I had my interns do this just this week, and this is what they found online at retailers throughout the country. So this is up to date, current. So what are we gonna do about it? How does price discrimination add another layer to the wage inequality that women also deal with? Well, it's yet another blow. Um. When I did the service review in nineteen ninety six, we found out through the Assembly Office of Research in California that women were paying fourteen hundred dollars in a gender tax every year, more uh than men. So imagine, on top of the fact that we're in a seat she session, not a recession, more women are out of work than men. And there's one point three million women who have left the workforce since COVID hit and have not returned, in part because of the lack of childcare. This number is the highest number of women not employed since n So you couple that with women out of work, UM, women getting paid less than men, and on top of that, products are and services are costing them more. There ought to be a law, and that's why I've introduced the Pink Tax Repeal Act and we have fifty one co sponsors on it. Now, this issue, this pink tax issue, when we talk about the say the word again a a she session she session, It does this she session strike women equally or even within that is their additional inequities based on race? Oh, no question. UM, it's more egregious for women of color UM, African American women, Latino women, UM. And the amount of loss and income UH is the greatest for Latino women. So your pink tax repeal at it's bad partisan and basically we're trying to get all of these manufacturers and retailers on the same plane to basically say, if it's something as simple as deodorant and it both you keep both of y'all from being musty, it should be the same price. That's right, unless you can. I'm sure it's not worded like that. I'm sure you worded it more professionally. You probably said FTC and Attorney General. You use a lot of the proper words. That's right. We did use more proper words to basically say, if you don't play by these rules, you're going to be sued. And so then the bill has forty co sponsors right now. Has there been any pushback that you've seen so far on your proposal? And the numbers have grown, it's now at fifty one, and I've talked to the chairwoman of the subcommittee. She loves the bill, and we're gonna have a hearing on it and hopefully get it to the House floor within the next few months. And we can credit you with helping me get it over the top. Dasy, no credit here, no credit here? What role can consumers play in provoking change? And by consumers I mean men. You know we're the problem. You are the problem. Well, the problem is that it's not illegal in most states to charge more for services based on gender or charge more for products. You should not be discriminating on goods and sirs is based on gender. It should be based on the time it takes to do a service and what's in the product. Women pay about more to get their hair cut than men do, and they pay about six more at the dry cleaners for the same service for the same item, and then for car repairs they pay about thirty more. Now in California, back in the nineties, I had legislation passed that was signed into law that said for services you had to base it not on gender, but on the amount of time it takes to provide that service. For instance, I time the last time I got my hair cut, it took ten minutes, and I watched a man getting his haircut and it took longer. So if we do base it on time, then I think you're just see the tables turned a little bit and then there'll be an outcry from you guys, because you're gonna be paying more for your two dollar dry cleaning shirt. Wouldn't what you that you all were first aware of a pink tax existing because you know, you gotta figure you have a little bit of a blind spot to certain inequities, and then one day you just go, wait a minute. When was When was your wait a minute moment? Congress warm when I started with you, it was when I took my husband's Oxford shirt shirts to the dry cleaner and they were, you know, a dollar fifty a shirt, and my Oxford shirt costs, you know, three fifty four dollars. That's when I thought, wait a minute, something's wrong here. I can remember when I first started shaving my legs around six seven years old. It was a very hairy child. Uh No, I was thirteen, twelve, thirteen somewhere around there, and my mom bought me a razor and some shaving cream, and I remember the Gillette razor being considerably more expensive than what men use, and my mom refusing to buy me that razor and also bought me a can of barbesal, like the old school men's shaving cream. And so when I shaved my legs, I used like I just used this stuff for ment. And I still if I'm being honest, I still have an affinity for the smell of barbesal That's why I just never shaved my legs. Mine was. I went through a terrible phase where I had um what called pixie haircut to be nice about it, and I went to a hair salon and the girl's haircuts were like about twenty dollars more, and I was like, why, I'm literally getting the same haircut as that guy in the chair And I just at the time thought that they were just a really like sexist hair place, and they were like, oh, women, you know you guys have more layers. I'm like, it's the exact same haircut. And then it wasn't until I went to your office and I was ashamed. I was like, oh my god, this is a thing, like another thing to add on top of everything else. So you opened my eyes, congress woman. We want to open the eyes of both men and women in this country to recognize that this is another form of discrimination that we've got to stamp out. Well, Congress Sorman, I know we don't have a lot of time with you, and I want you to be able to get back into those halls of justice and fight with all of those idiots that you see on the floor every day. I know that. You know, after about four decades in public service in the form of politics, you've made the decision to retire. So you know in your own words, you know, just tell us what's next for you? What what does retirement? Because I'm always I feel like people who are four people and who fight for the people. You don't turn that off, that's right. Like I have buddies that a retired firefighters and now they train firefight like there's still something else that they do that's adjacent to helping people. So what does retirement look like for you? Have you decided what that what the next four decades it's going to be. Well, I don't know exactly, but all I'm doing is going home because I mean a commitment to my husband that I would spend more time at home. So, UM, I'm going to continue to be engaged, use my voice. UM. I want to start a nonprofit foundation for the region in which I live, and I want to continue to give back, so I will continue to do that. Well, Congress from and Spirit, thank you so much for going beyond the scenes with us, and I'll be sending you an email. I have some discount deodorant that I will be more than happy to sell you. Sell me dare you. I'll send you some of that pink stuff that I have. Okay, fair enough. Great to be with you. So after the break, Daisy and Stacy and I would like to talk more about how this segment came together. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back home. Daisy, Stacy, walk me through how this piece came to be. Because the congresswoman is presenting a whole bunch of different stuff and y'all only have four minutes maybe five and a half this issue. How can you break down centuries of inequality against the woman in five minutes? Get ready to feel bad about yourself? Roy, get ready? How this piece coming to be? Just want me through the germination of it? In the building. Well, Stacy and I were making a special for Comedy Central called Dasiltic Abroad. You can find it on Paramount Plus. Stream it now anytime you feel like getting out of your living room traveling the world. I think it plays better now than it did, and things are still just as bad as they were when we filmed it, so it's still totally relevant. Yeah, anyway, and Congresswoman Spear was kind enough to talk to us for for the special and I think we only had like you said, we only had a few minutes. It's of time with her not only to shoot, but in the actual piece itself, and and she was able to beautifully shed a light on all of the discrimination that women face when it comes to wage inequality and health care. But one thing that came up when we sat down and spoke with her is the pink tax. And we definitely talked about it a little bit in that interview, but there just wasn't enough time. So Stacy and I felt like we really wanted to do a bigger piece on it, so she was kind enough with her time to give us a whole other interview. So we went back to d C and did an entire piece on the pink tax. Yeah. I mean in her office had all those products, so I didn't even know that it existed. And I just remember like that kind of overshadowed what we were there to talk about. Not really, but it was just like we just didn't know, and we're both very outraged about it, and we just exchanged a glance for like we're going to do a segment on this something on this Yeah, it's when trying to flip the table. Well I did, I did split the table. I pulled my back and it hasn't been the same since. But I destroyed some furniture. She couldn't use ointment on her back because it costs more for a woman than it did demand. So she's exactly. No. It was one of those things where like, as a woman, you noticed small things that come up, like, oh, why is that so much more expensive than this one? Oh well, I guess I'll just buy the men's version. Or why am I paying three dollars more from my husband's shirts at the dry cleaners that my own? Oh well, I guess I just will boycott dry cleaning now, little things like that, you you clock, But we didn't realize how huge the issue was until she really pointed it out. Stacy in the building. For the listeners who don't know this, you are like, there's two types of segment directors. They're the people who go, Okay, what's the story and how do we make this funny? And then there are the people that are more lighthearted and go, I'm funny, how do I keep this funny? There's too much sad shit in my funny. Oh no, I've got to add more sad ship to Where is this going? Why am I getting all of a sudden No, this isn't a bad thing because it's it's the balance and it's just it's cereal. It's it's cereal and milk. Some people put milk in the bowl first, then the cereal. Some people put you get what I'm saying that aages savages animal cereal. There's people out there who do it. Now, there's only one way to do it. At the end of the day, it's still a bowl of cereal. It's my point into me. You have a different approach from a lot of the other segment directors. So how do you navigate the seriousness of a topic with humor? Like? How are you able to balance that? Well? I hope I balance it, but with um for this particular segment. I think one of the good things about working with DESI is we both have an absurd sense of humor. I think we bonded over our love for like naked Gun Airplane, and we've pitched a lot of ideas. I'd always get shut down, and I think one of the vehicles i'd like to use to tell the serious story is like kind of showing it in an absurd way to get the point across ups not just like statistics and facts and whatever. So we're like, let's show away that there's this gender price discrimination by maybe going to a store and kind of wait in a in a store. Was the store open or did we rent out the store and we just shot in a store. We can't afford that. We we don't even get crafty. We have to like, you know, sneak in corn nuts in the stock room. Now it was fully open. We were dodging customers. I mean, it was funny. Me and the d went down one aisle because we were scouting the aisle. We're like, oh, let's do this here. And then there was like a lady chopping like can pies and you're just taking her time. We're like, okay, fine, we'll go to another aisle, and we just had to keep working around the customers and how we do it. It's how we do it at the daily. Ships don't have like you never shaved your legs in the middle of a grocery store before, of course, of course, yeah, and so yeah, and it was just fun and you know, Dassi and I work. Um, I mean her ideas are just as sert as mine. We just piggyback off and like take it to this extreme place where hopefully it goes and you know, we just do it till they shut us down. And we thought, let's just do it in a way where we go to the grocery store and as he investigates it, I don't really know what their justification of you like sneaking around it was, Oh, because you weren't paying for it. You weren't going to pay for it, so right, I had to go very incognito almost U Yeah, real real investigative work. Well, I think that's the thing that makes us laugh so hard, is like us taking our jobs way too seriously. So anytime we have an opportunity for me to just take my job too seriously and not do it that well, we could a thousand percent. But Stacy is one of my absolute all time favorite directors to work with. She no, you really like you. She's so good at not only being a collaborator, but what you said, like, Stacy is excellent at knowing how to tell a story clearly, including all the facts, making sure that there's an arc to it making sure that we're we're telling the full picture, but also making it really funny. And then she also has a really unique visual comedy brain, so she tries to direct the pieces in a way where she's she gets creative and finds new ways to tell the story that didn't exist to begin. Oh my god, you guys, it's true, like your mind works in a different way to get to the same bowl of cereal. Yeah, I had a game show in the middle, like yeah, where no one wins, men win as displayed and some of these products we have with us today and again we all I mean does he and I just again, like without trying to be preaching, we just try to put it in a fun package that can like kind of speed it up. Because also we have to, like we have that time challenge where we have to make it as interesting as possible and give as much information as possible in like a short window of time. So we're like, why don't we do a because you kind of automatically go to the prices, right, you know, mindset when you're doing this, and so um and I think it was a collaboration between both of us because Jackie Congresswoman Jackie spear wanted to show off all the products dollars to Oh great, so while your little girls learning how to walk, she'll also learn how to navigate the system that's exploiting her. Sorry. These are two children's snarkles eight four sixteen twenty two for the pink, So women literally have to pay more to breathe. Sorry, if I just love dose these graphic face going Sorry. In between all the products is where you're so good though, because like anything where it's like data heavy or number heavy or too much information, Stacy always comes up with a way to get it out quickly and efficiently in a really fun visual way. Thank you very much for saying that. Is there anything Daisy that got cut that you wish had made it? There's always one joke for its correspondence. There's always one joke we go, come on, man, you cut that? There were so there were too dumb one of it. This was a brilliant visual gag that Stacy came up with. Where in the grocery store, I was like army crawling on my elbow on the floor like chin almost to the grocery store floor. This was clearly before COVID, and it was so dumb. But we we did so much foot of footage of that, and just because of the fact that we spent I spent so much time on that floor, I thought, well, this should make it in the piece. It was the cameras wasn't even do that at Yeah. And then the other thing. Do you do you remember sitting down with Ryan the economy professor, and for some reason we discovered this like flirtation that I had with him where I was suddenly in love with him. In the middle of the piece, we had this weird runner where I can like under my breath telling him that I loved him. It had nothing to do with anything, but I think it wound up. It was like it remained in the first two or three cuts because we just found it so dumb. And at a certain point I think people were like, that's not what this piece is about. Your love for this man is not. It's not going to make it. DESI. I would say, also, almost every time Daisy does her own stunt work, she puts her heart and soul into it and it always gets She'll be like, there's a there's one thing we did where she fell into a bunch of trash bags. I think a needle poked or whatever. And then also in the grocery store you were testing out as your scooters and you knocked down paper tiles, which we immediately felt bad. We had a stack back up afterwards because we didn't want to like, Oh, no, I forgot about that. Yeah, there's a lot of Yeah. So the pink tax starts at an early age, infancy even and you all are parents, you know, Stacy, you're a new mother. Have you noticed the difference between boys and because I'm sure you've bought toys for other people's children, and Daisy has a son, you like, have you noticed have you started noticing the pink tax and the prevalence of it even at such a young age, even with a bye Bye baby off coupon. I do get the email every single Day's as you said that I need you need. I know that's true. I didn't start paying attention to this stuff till we did this segment, and so now I'm like very aware of it. And I would say, for the most part, like all those toys, which, by the way, such a rip off of an industry, but that's a separate piece. The everything, for the most part, seems to vehicle but there was this one kids activity, Jim. I don't even know why they called a gym, like those you know, those stupid things they lay on with all those crap paint. And there was one, yeah, and they there was one that was like a very stereotypical pink with like unicorns, that was like a couple of dollars more than the male version. It's just a couple of dollars, but still it's the principle of it. And I like the other one better, but it's I've noticed it in that and also um another another um like one of those what are those crinkly toys? A couple of those same. Yeah, I don't know those sensory things. I'm still learning. I'm still very new. I don't know what I'm doing. But I the poppers is that we called the poppers, I'm going to call them that from I've seen those. I don't even know what that is. No, I was talking about the crinkly paper things for the sensory things when they start to grab crap, but whatever, what is that? I don't hang on, pope, I don't understand. It's just holes and you just pop a little, just like the new slat bracelet from the eighties. I don't this poppet for a boy costs four dollars for a girl N dollars. I believe this basketball for a boy thirty seven sets for a girl. I'd love doing this show in my son's room. I just like, just give me my toys. Roy's going around telling people that he's buying his son poppers. After the break, I want to talk a little bit about solutions and ways that we can try and bring about change to the pink tax. I know that the congresswoman is doing her part, but we will also talk about some of the marketing and the strategy and how retail has been able to pulld us off. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. Welcome back to beyond the scenes as we bring this conversation about the pink tax home. The pink tax where women need a quality on the cost of goods and services in spite of the fact that eventually men pay for the dates and y'all get in free for ladies night and I'm strangers at a bar and that saves you a lot of money, yet you steal. How hilarious would that be if that had been my position with the congress woman, I'm like, where hell, well, I would love takes her DJ headphones off, slams and it's like we didn't. We didn't have enough time win her. But I seriously, with a straight face, I was just gonna ask you, Congress, Congress, want to do women getting in free for ladies night offset Some of these things that you say are inequities. How about all the doors I've opened? Oh how fucking hilarious would that have been? But we did not have time. Get her back, get her back on the phone, get her back. Let's get her back. So does he and the piece You talk about the term pink it and shrink it. What is this pink it and shrink it marketing strategy and why is it problematic? Well, contrary to the there's a common misconception that that is just the surgery that a woman has to rejuvenate post birth. It is not that it is actually pink it or shrink it, pick it and shrink it. Yeah, it's actually, from what I understand, a marketing term when you take an item that is made for men or a gender neutral item, and you shrink it down to the size for a woman, and you make it pink specifically to market it to women. So essentially it should cost less, but inevitably it costs more. So we literally just go, oh, it's for ladies. Look it's in a pink box and smaller, and we're gonna charge you more. Should we move more towards gender neutral products? What's the solution to this stacy? I mean, I think it's crazy that Congresswoman has been fighting this for decades and there's still I mean, when Dessie and I were trying to think of like a way to come up with a solution to this, we were like, people were saying, why don't you just buy the male version? And then Daisy does that beautiful long you know, zoom and shot where you're like, oh, sure, it's just another thing to add on to all the obstacles we have to do to be a woman. And for me, that speech you give is like the thesis of this whole thing. How could women afford to live in this world? And if the man's version is cheaper than just buy that one? Yeah, sure, if you think about it, it's just one extra step in a series of extra steps that women take every day to thrive in a man's world, Like how we get up a little extra early every morning to put on an outfit that looks professional yet accessible, but not too accessible because we don't want to be taken advantage of. Or how we walk an extra five blocks to work so that we can avoid the construction zone because men like to tell us to smile more. And when we get to work, we want to make our voices heard, but in a way that's helpful and strong, without being overbearing or shrill. You know, we do all of this without even an ounce of resentment, because resentment causes wrinkles, and society does not value aging women. Is there immen's wrinkle cream that you can recommend? Yes, there are several. Sure it costs less, maybe a little. To me. That was the most important part of the segment, and Desi did it all in one freaking take. Beautiful. She looked like she was crying inside as she was doing it, because as you should. When we were talking to people, they were all like, just by the man's pack, just by the man's pocket. It's like, no, that's not the point. Women often do have to take extra steps throughout the day just because they're a woman, and so this shouldn't be one extra step that they have today. I don't know what the solution is, but it should not be one more thing for a woman to have to go out of our way to do. People just stop being assholes. Just let us all be equal. To stop over pricing stacy and three sentences are less. Solve economic sexism. Please ready to go. I'll do it in one second. No, I don't stop. Stop doing it. Guys, just stop, make it quick, make it stop. Maybe a simple solution is all of the goods that charge more for women's versions of the product. Maybe in the male versions of the commercials, maybe there's just like a woman that just pops up in the middle of it, so that we can make these products more gender neutral, because commercials are very gender divisive. Yeah, you know, like if you look at like a ray, this is the Gillett race and you can shave your like the blade comes out the lava and the guy grabs it and and then just you can shape your face and they just have a woman tad pop in and women too. That's all the time we have for today. Thank you very much, Star guest, Daisy Lighting, Stacy Angeles, and Congresswoman Jackie Speer for taking us beyond the seats. Listen to the Daily Show beyond the Scenes on Apple podcast, the I heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, welcome to be on the scenes. This is the podcast. It goes deeper into segments that originally aired on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Like, be honest, scene this, this is what you think about this podcast. This is what this podcast is. Like. All right, Like you have a party. You go to the party. It's a good party. After that party, you go to the hotel lobby and it's like at four o'clock in the morning, eating greasy food. You eating waffle house, You're telling all your deep, dark secret. Somebody started working on top of the piano. Then the hotel manager come over and be like, I'm in the y'all actually stay at this hotel. Let me be like, shut your hate NASA. Then the police sho. That's basically what this podcast is. We're the party that happens after the original party that is The Daily Show. I'm Roy Wood Jr. Today we're gonna be talking about the pink tax and the outside costs of just being a woman. Let's play the clipp being a woman can cost you, apparently in average or thanks to gender price discrimination, if you're a woman, just about everything costs you more than similar products. Marketing for men it's called the pay tacks. Research has shown women pay more than men forty two percent of the time. In fact, a recent study shows that starts from the time you were born until the day you die. Today, I'm joined by Daily Show correspondent Daisi Lighting and segment director Stacy Angels, who both created this segment for the show. Ladies. Hello, Hi Roy, Hello Roy joining us. Also, we are very lucky to have Congresswoman Jackie Spear, who was in the original piece with Daisy, and this congresswoman has been fighting gender discrimination for twenty thirty years. Congress Woman speA, welcome to beyond the scenes. It is my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you for letting me be a man and this woman. Too bad. We don't rule the world though, just because we're ruling this particular podcast. That's the problem. We're not ruling the world yet. I would be honest. I felt uncomfortable host in this episode. I was like, dazy need the guest host. I don't want to get in trouble. You're doing great, Roy. Okay, before we do anything, we have to define what the issue is. So Daisy Stacy, let's start off off the top. What is the pink tax. Well, the pink tax refers to the markup on goods and services that are specifically being targeted to women and gender price discrimination. So, Roy, you everything you buy is cheaper than the same products we want to buy. Okay. So if we both bought deodorant, and your and mine is Man deodorant and yours is Woman deodorant, same brand, you're paying more than me, is what you're saying, Stacy. It's more expensive for us to smell good than for you, which is why Stacy and I refuse to smell good. Yeah, you're lucky this is on zoom, Roy, because you don't want to smell this. Okay, let us back in the studio. Yes, okay, nothing to do with COVID. So congress Woman, Congresswoman, I'm sorry, I apologize for both of them. Um. Why why does the pink tax exists? And more importantly, how do manufacturers and retailers justify this tax? Well, the pink tax exists because it's a form of gender discrimination. It's not just about pink. It's about the fact that women's products cost more than men's products. Um, when they are basically identical. Um, it is important for us to address this, because, as we all know, women still make less than men. Uh For every dollar mannerns, a woman makes a d two cents. If you look at women of color, it's even more egregious. And that's real money when everything is said and done. Are there other examples of this other than deodorant? Because, and I'll be honest, as a man, this isn't something that you would normally think about because you're not buying a lot of women's items unless you are a committed strong man in a relationship like I am, so you're not aware of this. Give me what what other items other than I have heard that women get worse deals on cars. But let me give you some products that kind of make the case. All right, So this is um Dove deodorant for men and women. And as you can see here, for a four pack, a woman is gonna pay nineteen dollars and thirty nine cents. The man is gonna pay thirteen dollars and fifty eight cents. That's just deodor Let's move on. How about probiotics for women? UM seventy nine seventy nine for a man? All right, this like the price is right? Let me guess there is the price is wrong though, that's the problem, always wrong. So the price is right needs to have a gender separate episode maybe so huh. So look at this. These are bibs, right, bibbs for boys, bibbs for girls, A dollar more for the girls bibs. Now, wait, there's more, what there's more? Oh my god? These are kids diapers, the kids diapers, thirty seven dollars for the girl, thirty three dollars for the boy. But I'll show you the same discrimination. Supers and boys have more happening to fill out diaper space. So really square footage, it should cost more for the men, right, probably because they need more absorbents, They need more absorbent material, so it's right right now. We did this same study two or three years ago, um, and they were egregious around children's toys. So I had my interns do this just this week, and this is what they found online at retailers throughout the country. So this is up to date, current. So what are we gonna do about it? How does price discrimination add another layer to the wage inequality that women also deal with? Well, it's yet another blow. Um. When I did the service review in nineteen ninety six, we found out through the Assembly Office of Research in California that women were paying fourteen hundred dollars in a gender tax every year, more uh than men. So imagine, on top of the fact that we're in a seat she session, not a recession, more women are out of work than men. And there's one point three million women who have left the workforce since COVID hit and have not returned, in part because of the lack of childcare. This number is the highest number of women not employed since n So you couple that with women out of work, UM, women getting paid less than men, and on top of that, products are and services are costing them more. There ought to be a law, and that's why I've introduced the Pink Tax Repeal Act and we have fifty one co sponsors on it. Now, this issue, this pink tax issue, when we talk about the say the word again a a she session she session, It does this she session strike women equally or even within that is their additional inequities based on race? Oh, no question. UM, it's more egregious for women of color UM, African American women, Latino women, UM. And the amount of loss and income UH is the greatest for Latino women. So your pink tax repeal at it's bad partisan and basically we're trying to get all of these manufacturers and retailers on the same plane to basically say, if it's something as simple as deodorant and it both you keep both of y'all from being musty, it should be the same price. That's right, unless you can. I'm sure it's not worded like that. I'm sure you worded it more professionally. You probably said FTC and Attorney General. You use a lot of the proper words. That's right. We did use more proper words to basically say, if you don't play by these rules, you're going to be sued. And so then the bill has forty co sponsors right now. Has there been any pushback that you've seen so far on your proposal? And the numbers have grown, it's now at fifty one, and I've talked to the chairwoman of the subcommittee. She loves the bill, and we're gonna have a hearing on it and hopefully get it to the House floor within the next few months. And we can credit you with helping me get it over the top. Dasy, no credit here, no credit here? What role can consumers play in provoking change? And by consumers I mean men. You know we're the problem. You are the problem. Well, the problem is that it's not illegal in most states to charge more for services based on gender or charge more for products. You should not be discriminating on goods and sirs is based on gender. It should be based on the time it takes to do a service and what's in the product. Women pay about more to get their hair cut than men do, and they pay about six more at the dry cleaners for the same service for the same item, and then for car repairs they pay about thirty more. Now in California, back in the nineties, I had legislation passed that was signed into law that said for services you had to base it not on gender, but on the amount of time it takes to provide that service. For instance, I time the last time I got my hair cut, it took ten minutes, and I watched a man getting his haircut and it took longer. So if we do base it on time, then I think you're just see the tables turned a little bit and then there'll be an outcry from you guys, because you're gonna be paying more for your two dollar dry cleaning shirt. Wouldn't what you that you all were first aware of a pink tax existing because you know, you gotta figure you have a little bit of a blind spot to certain inequities, and then one day you just go, wait a minute. When was When was your wait a minute moment? Congress warm when I started with you, it was when I took my husband's Oxford shirt shirts to the dry cleaner and they were, you know, a dollar fifty a shirt, and my Oxford shirt costs, you know, three fifty four dollars. That's when I thought, wait a minute, something's wrong here. I can remember when I first started shaving my legs around six seven years old. It was a very hairy child. Uh No, I was thirteen, twelve, thirteen somewhere around there, and my mom bought me a razor and some shaving cream, and I remember the Gillette razor being considerably more expensive than what men use, and my mom refusing to buy me that razor and also bought me a can of barbesal, like the old school men's shaving cream. And so when I shaved my legs, I used like I just used this stuff for ment. And I still if I'm being honest, I still have an affinity for the smell of barbesal That's why I just never shaved my legs. Mine was. I went through a terrible phase where I had um what called pixie haircut to be nice about it, and I went to a hair salon and the girl's haircuts were like about twenty dollars more, and I was like, why, I'm literally getting the same haircut as that guy in the chair And I just at the time thought that they were just a really like sexist hair place, and they were like, oh, women, you know you guys have more layers. I'm like, it's the exact same haircut. And then it wasn't until I went to your office and I was ashamed. I was like, oh my god, this is a thing, like another thing to add on top of everything else. So you opened my eyes, congress woman. We want to open the eyes of both men and women in this country to recognize that this is another form of discrimination that we've got to stamp out. Well, Congress Sorman, I know we don't have a lot of time with you, and I want you to be able to get back into those halls of justice and fight with all of those idiots that you see on the floor every day. I know that. You know, after about four decades in public service in the form of politics, you've made the decision to retire. So you know in your own words, you know, just tell us what's next for you? What what does retirement? Because I'm always I feel like people who are four people and who fight for the people. You don't turn that off, that's right. Like I have buddies that a retired firefighters and now they train firefight like there's still something else that they do that's adjacent to helping people. So what does retirement look like for you? Have you decided what that what the next four decades it's going to be. Well, I don't know exactly, but all I'm doing is going home because I mean a commitment to my husband that I would spend more time at home. So, UM, I'm going to continue to be engaged, use my voice. UM. I want to start a nonprofit foundation for the region in which I live, and I want to continue to give back, so I will continue to do that. Well, Congress from and Spirit, thank you so much for going beyond the scenes with us, and I'll be sending you an email. I have some discount deodorant that I will be more than happy to sell you. Sell me dare you. I'll send you some of that pink stuff that I have. Okay, fair enough. Great to be with you. So after the break, Daisy and Stacy and I would like to talk more about how this segment came together. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back home. Daisy, Stacy, walk me through how this piece came to be. Because the congresswoman is presenting a whole bunch of different stuff and y'all only have four minutes maybe five and a half this issue. How can you break down centuries of inequality against the woman in five minutes? Get ready to feel bad about yourself? Roy, get ready? How this piece coming to be? Just want me through the germination of it? In the building. Well, Stacy and I were making a special for Comedy Central called Dasiltic Abroad. You can find it on Paramount Plus. Stream it now anytime you feel like getting out of your living room traveling the world. I think it plays better now than it did, and things are still just as bad as they were when we filmed it, so it's still totally relevant. Yeah, anyway, and Congresswoman Spear was kind enough to talk to us for for the special and I think we only had like you said, we only had a few minutes. It's of time with her not only to shoot, but in the actual piece itself, and and she was able to beautifully shed a light on all of the discrimination that women face when it comes to wage inequality and health care. But one thing that came up when we sat down and spoke with her is the pink tax. And we definitely talked about it a little bit in that interview, but there just wasn't enough time. So Stacy and I felt like we really wanted to do a bigger piece on it, so she was kind enough with her time to give us a whole other interview. So we went back to d C and did an entire piece on the pink tax. Yeah. I mean in her office had all those products, so I didn't even know that it existed. And I just remember like that kind of overshadowed what we were there to talk about. Not really, but it was just like we just didn't know, and we're both very outraged about it, and we just exchanged a glance for like we're going to do a segment on this something on this Yeah, it's when trying to flip the table. Well I did, I did split the table. I pulled my back and it hasn't been the same since. But I destroyed some furniture. She couldn't use ointment on her back because it costs more for a woman than it did demand. So she's exactly. No. It was one of those things where like, as a woman, you noticed small things that come up, like, oh, why is that so much more expensive than this one? Oh well, I guess I'll just buy the men's version. Or why am I paying three dollars more from my husband's shirts at the dry cleaners that my own? Oh well, I guess I just will boycott dry cleaning now, little things like that, you you clock, But we didn't realize how huge the issue was until she really pointed it out. Stacy in the building. For the listeners who don't know this, you are like, there's two types of segment directors. They're the people who go, Okay, what's the story and how do we make this funny? And then there are the people that are more lighthearted and go, I'm funny, how do I keep this funny? There's too much sad shit in my funny. Oh no, I've got to add more sad ship to Where is this going? Why am I getting all of a sudden No, this isn't a bad thing because it's it's the balance and it's just it's cereal. It's it's cereal and milk. Some people put milk in the bowl first, then the cereal. Some people put you get what I'm saying that aages savages animal cereal. There's people out there who do it. Now, there's only one way to do it. At the end of the day, it's still a bowl of cereal. It's my point into me. You have a different approach from a lot of the other segment directors. So how do you navigate the seriousness of a topic with humor? Like? How are you able to balance that? Well? I hope I balance it, but with um for this particular segment. I think one of the good things about working with DESI is we both have an absurd sense of humor. I think we bonded over our love for like naked Gun Airplane, and we've pitched a lot of ideas. I'd always get shut down, and I think one of the vehicles i'd like to use to tell the serious story is like kind of showing it in an absurd way to get the point across ups not just like statistics and facts and whatever. So we're like, let's show away that there's this gender price discrimination by maybe going to a store and kind of wait in a in a store. Was the store open or did we rent out the store and we just shot in a store. We can't afford that. We we don't even get crafty. We have to like, you know, sneak in corn nuts in the stock room. Now it was fully open. We were dodging customers. I mean, it was funny. Me and the d went down one aisle because we were scouting the aisle. We're like, oh, let's do this here. And then there was like a lady chopping like can pies and you're just taking her time. We're like, okay, fine, we'll go to another aisle, and we just had to keep working around the customers and how we do it. It's how we do it at the daily. Ships don't have like you never shaved your legs in the middle of a grocery store before, of course, of course, yeah, and so yeah, and it was just fun and you know, Dassi and I work. Um, I mean her ideas are just as sert as mine. We just piggyback off and like take it to this extreme place where hopefully it goes and you know, we just do it till they shut us down. And we thought, let's just do it in a way where we go to the grocery store and as he investigates it, I don't really know what their justification of you like sneaking around it was, Oh, because you weren't paying for it. You weren't going to pay for it, so right, I had to go very incognito almost U Yeah, real real investigative work. Well, I think that's the thing that makes us laugh so hard, is like us taking our jobs way too seriously. So anytime we have an opportunity for me to just take my job too seriously and not do it that well, we could a thousand percent. But Stacy is one of my absolute all time favorite directors to work with. She no, you really like you. She's so good at not only being a collaborator, but what you said, like, Stacy is excellent at knowing how to tell a story clearly, including all the facts, making sure that there's an arc to it making sure that we're we're telling the full picture, but also making it really funny. And then she also has a really unique visual comedy brain, so she tries to direct the pieces in a way where she's she gets creative and finds new ways to tell the story that didn't exist to begin. Oh my god, you guys, it's true, like your mind works in a different way to get to the same bowl of cereal. Yeah, I had a game show in the middle, like yeah, where no one wins, men win as displayed and some of these products we have with us today and again we all I mean does he and I just again, like without trying to be preaching, we just try to put it in a fun package that can like kind of speed it up. Because also we have to, like we have that time challenge where we have to make it as interesting as possible and give as much information as possible in like a short window of time. So we're like, why don't we do a because you kind of automatically go to the prices, right, you know, mindset when you're doing this, and so um and I think it was a collaboration between both of us because Jackie Congresswoman Jackie spear wanted to show off all the products dollars to Oh great, so while your little girls learning how to walk, she'll also learn how to navigate the system that's exploiting her. Sorry. These are two children's snarkles eight four sixteen twenty two for the pink, So women literally have to pay more to breathe. Sorry, if I just love dose these graphic face going Sorry. In between all the products is where you're so good though, because like anything where it's like data heavy or number heavy or too much information, Stacy always comes up with a way to get it out quickly and efficiently in a really fun visual way. Thank you very much for saying that. Is there anything Daisy that got cut that you wish had made it? There's always one joke for its correspondence. There's always one joke we go, come on, man, you cut that? There were so there were too dumb one of it. This was a brilliant visual gag that Stacy came up with. Where in the grocery store, I was like army crawling on my elbow on the floor like chin almost to the grocery store floor. This was clearly before COVID, and it was so dumb. But we we did so much foot of footage of that, and just because of the fact that we spent I spent so much time on that floor, I thought, well, this should make it in the piece. It was the cameras wasn't even do that at Yeah. And then the other thing. Do you do you remember sitting down with Ryan the economy professor, and for some reason we discovered this like flirtation that I had with him where I was suddenly in love with him. In the middle of the piece, we had this weird runner where I can like under my breath telling him that I loved him. It had nothing to do with anything, but I think it wound up. It was like it remained in the first two or three cuts because we just found it so dumb. And at a certain point I think people were like, that's not what this piece is about. Your love for this man is not. It's not going to make it. DESI. I would say, also, almost every time Daisy does her own stunt work, she puts her heart and soul into it and it always gets She'll be like, there's a there's one thing we did where she fell into a bunch of trash bags. I think a needle poked or whatever. And then also in the grocery store you were testing out as your scooters and you knocked down paper tiles, which we immediately felt bad. We had a stack back up afterwards because we didn't want to like, Oh, no, I forgot about that. Yeah, there's a lot of Yeah. So the pink tax starts at an early age, infancy even and you all are parents, you know, Stacy, you're a new mother. Have you noticed the difference between boys and because I'm sure you've bought toys for other people's children, and Daisy has a son, you like, have you noticed have you started noticing the pink tax and the prevalence of it even at such a young age, even with a bye Bye baby off coupon. I do get the email every single Day's as you said that I need you need. I know that's true. I didn't start paying attention to this stuff till we did this segment, and so now I'm like very aware of it. And I would say, for the most part, like all those toys, which, by the way, such a rip off of an industry, but that's a separate piece. The everything, for the most part, seems to vehicle but there was this one kids activity, Jim. I don't even know why they called a gym, like those you know, those stupid things they lay on with all those crap paint. And there was one, yeah, and they there was one that was like a very stereotypical pink with like unicorns, that was like a couple of dollars more than the male version. It's just a couple of dollars, but still it's the principle of it. And I like the other one better, but it's I've noticed it in that and also um another another um like one of those what are those crinkly toys? A couple of those same. Yeah, I don't know those sensory things. I'm still learning. I'm still very new. I don't know what I'm doing. But I the poppers is that we called the poppers, I'm going to call them that from I've seen those. I don't even know what that is. No, I was talking about the crinkly paper things for the sensory things when they start to grab crap, but whatever, what is that? I don't hang on, pope, I don't understand. It's just holes and you just pop a little, just like the new slat bracelet from the eighties. I don't this poppet for a boy costs four dollars for a girl N dollars. I believe this basketball for a boy thirty seven sets for a girl. I'd love doing this show in my son's room. I just like, just give me my toys. Roy's going around telling people that he's buying his son poppers. After the break, I want to talk a little bit about solutions and ways that we can try and bring about change to the pink tax. I know that the congresswoman is doing her part, but we will also talk about some of the marketing and the strategy and how retail has been able to pulld us off. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. Welcome back to beyond the scenes as we bring this conversation about the pink tax home. The pink tax where women need a quality on the cost of goods and services in spite of the fact that eventually men pay for the dates and y'all get in free for ladies night and I'm strangers at a bar and that saves you a lot of money, yet you steal. How hilarious would that be if that had been my position with the congress woman, I'm like, where hell, well, I would love takes her DJ headphones off, slams and it's like we didn't. We didn't have enough time win her. But I seriously, with a straight face, I was just gonna ask you, Congress, Congress, want to do women getting in free for ladies night offset Some of these things that you say are inequities. How about all the doors I've opened? Oh how fucking hilarious would that have been? But we did not have time. Get her back, get her back on the phone, get her back. Let's get her back. So does he and the piece You talk about the term pink it and shrink it. What is this pink it and shrink it marketing strategy and why is it problematic? Well, contrary to the there's a common misconception that that is just the surgery that a woman has to rejuvenate post birth. It is not that it is actually pink it or shrink it, pick it and shrink it. Yeah, it's actually, from what I understand, a marketing term when you take an item that is made for men or a gender neutral item, and you shrink it down to the size for a woman, and you make it pink specifically to market it to women. So essentially it should cost less, but inevitably it costs more. So we literally just go, oh, it's for ladies. Look it's in a pink box and smaller, and we're gonna charge you more. Should we move more towards gender neutral products? What's the solution to this stacy? I mean, I think it's crazy that Congresswoman has been fighting this for decades and there's still I mean, when Dessie and I were trying to think of like a way to come up with a solution to this, we were like, people were saying, why don't you just buy the male version? And then Daisy does that beautiful long you know, zoom and shot where you're like, oh, sure, it's just another thing to add on to all the obstacles we have to do to be a woman. And for me, that speech you give is like the thesis of this whole thing. How could women afford to live in this world? And if the man's version is cheaper than just buy that one? Yeah, sure, if you think about it, it's just one extra step in a series of extra steps that women take every day to thrive in a man's world, Like how we get up a little extra early every morning to put on an outfit that looks professional yet accessible, but not too accessible because we don't want to be taken advantage of. Or how we walk an extra five blocks to work so that we can avoid the construction zone because men like to tell us to smile more. And when we get to work, we want to make our voices heard, but in a way that's helpful and strong, without being overbearing or shrill. You know, we do all of this without even an ounce of resentment, because resentment causes wrinkles, and society does not value aging women. Is there immen's wrinkle cream that you can recommend? Yes, there are several. Sure it costs less, maybe a little. To me. That was the most important part of the segment, and Desi did it all in one freaking take. Beautiful. She looked like she was crying inside as she was doing it, because as you should. When we were talking to people, they were all like, just by the man's pack, just by the man's pocket. It's like, no, that's not the point. Women often do have to take extra steps throughout the day just because they're a woman, and so this shouldn't be one extra step that they have today. I don't know what the solution is, but it should not be one more thing for a woman to have to go out of our way to do. People just stop being assholes. Just let us all be equal. To stop over pricing stacy and three sentences are less. Solve economic sexism. Please ready to go. I'll do it in one second. No, I don't stop. Stop doing it. Guys, just stop, make it quick, make it stop. Maybe a simple solution is all of the goods that charge more for women's versions of the product. Maybe in the male versions of the commercials, maybe there's just like a woman that just pops up in the middle of it, so that we can make these products more gender neutral, because commercials are very gender divisive. Yeah, you know, like if you look at like a ray, this is the Gillett race and you can shave your like the blade comes out the lava and the guy grabs it and and then just you can shape your face and they just have a woman tad pop in and women too. That's all the time we have for today. Thank you very much, Star guest, Daisy Lighting, Stacy Angeles, and Congresswoman Jackie Speer for taking us beyond the seats. Listen to the Daily Show beyond the Scenes on Apple podcast, the I heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.