Man - it costs to be a woman

Ask any woman and she’ll tell you it costs more - way more - to be a woman. Ask a man, and he won’t disagree.

All generalisations are wrong, of course. But nine out of ten scientific surveys confirm what we already know … so I’ll just skip the science.

Surveys are fun, though, so I surveyed Adelaide pharmacy assistants about the differences in Mars v Venus spending they’ve observed.

Sure enough, despite all those rumoured sightings of metrosexuals and “peacock males”, from the expert vantage of the males and females behind the counter, it is true that women customers spend more on personal care products - much more. “Steve” estimated $20 a month for a man, and “Pauline” suggested about $80 for a woman.

This is backed up by the women’s magazine New Idea’s pitch to potential advertisers, which claims that New Idea readers, with an average annual household income of around $65,000, spend about $70 a month on cosmetics, perfume and, OK … aftershave. Much of this spending is an effort to achieve the so-called “natural look”. Not too natural, though.

Eccentric as she is, Germaine Greer made a good point earlier this year when she railed against the “exhausting, sometimes painful, and expensive business of hair and hairiness management”.

The “clothing and footwear” category is another money pit for the fairer sex. New Idea readers spend an average of $170 a month on dressing themselves. Whoever invented the “layered look” was a marketing genius - you have to pay for every garment it takes to get from naked to decently covered.

In the UK, surveys show that women are spending 56 per cent more on hair and beauty products and services than a decade ago.

Co-incidentally (or perhaps not), 31 per cent of those British women surveyed said they couldn’t afford to save. Could that possibly be because as a sex feel we compelled to spend on sequined tops, herbal spa treatments and Brazilians?

A scary report in the UK’s Daily Mail, “Are you spending your pension …?” earlier this year mentioned the unmentionable about unmentionables and other fripperies: we women buy things we don’t need and don’t wear. Also, I might add, things that fit for only a week or so and then are filed in the “too small” drawer. The Mail persuaded four young women with different salary levels to keep a spending diary for a month. They were spending at a rate that gobbled up between half and two-thirds of their income: on fishnet stockings, dresses, hair accessories and designer make-up.

It couldn’t be as bad here … could it?

I’m embarrassed to confess there’s an haute-couture skeleton in my cupboard, wearing those impulse buys that were wrong, wrong, wrong. I also have to face up to several lifetime supplies of moisturiser in my bathroom cabinet. Luckily for my self-esteem, I’m not alone.

Last year an Australian survey found that younger Australian women spend $1,500 a year to “capture Nicole Kidman’s style”. One in ten spent $3,600 annually to look like Nicole or some other celebrity. Somehow, I doubt they all succeeded.

Does the bottom line look big? It certainly does. Australian women melt the plastic at a rate of more than $10 billion a year on cosmetics, apparel and grooming services.

This spending is not all self-absorption: there’s an expected presentation standard for women in the workforce and it costs a bundle to live up to it. Socially, women have to calculate the exact formality of an occasion and dress to suit. As well, many of us are off on a self-improvement odyssey. And, while we’re at it, improving more than just the self. There’s also home decoration to consider. (I recall my accountant’s amazement at how much it cost to put up curtains in his house. Something made of brick, something with an engine - obviously, that would cost. But drapery? he asked, and shook his head.)

Women also need to see their loved ones looking good. Grandmothers spend oodles on babies and toddlers. Women enjoy choosing gifts - they spend not only on themselves, but also on other people.

And women spend to improve their bodies and minds: gym memberships, Pilates classes, university education, books and concerts.

Men have their consumer frailties too, of course. They spend on booze, cars, home repairs, eating out, gambling and holidays. However, one thing they don’t tend to do is pour vast amounts of their money into a warm bathtub and soak sensuously in the perfumed water for hours. According to an Adelaide law firm’s newsletter for female staff, that’s what lady legal eagles dream of doing … if only they had the time.

The vast majority of men prefer not to shop if they can avoid it. They do their Christmas shopping on December 24 - whereas some women have already started by July. Recent research shows that men can only handle one hour and 12 minutes of shopping before losing it. In Germany, some smart retailers have set up “Männergartens” with bar and sports facilities, where women can drop off their men while they head off for a bit of retail therapy.

All this spending keeps the economic wheels turning. Women are hugely tempted by advertising cleverly designed to do exactly that, just as the serpent sold poor Eve the fateful apple. Frances Sheen, editor of NewWoman, a magazine targeting younger women aged 25 to 40, blithely assures prospective advertisers that her magazine’s reader “feels empowered to make decisions that don’t always reflect her bank balance but reflect the active, independent and optimistic person she is”. Oh, good.

The sad thing is that some goods and services only women need seem unreasonably priced. Feminine products. Bras. Birth control pills. Hair styling: a ring-around of Adelaide hair salons showed that men’s wallets were trimmed about $20 for a Number 2 but women’s were shorn for between $5 to $35 more. Just for that little X chromosome.

Do men have to take taxis at night just to feel safe? No. (And they don’t have to queue for the loo either.) It’s not fair.

Now all of this wouldn’t really matter except for one glaring fact: women may spend more but they definitely earn less. They earn less because they are in jobs that pay less, or because they tend to work part time or casually. They earn less because their careers are interrupted when they have children and when they care for elderly parents.

Women retire with about half the superannuation savings of men. According to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) in 2002, the numbers are $43,300 compared to $78,700. In 2019 it’s projected to be $77,000 for women, $121,000 for men. ASFA has also discovered that women are less likely than men to have actively planned for their retirement. To make matters worse, Philippa Smith, the ASFA’s CEO, says that workers combining two or more low-paying jobs could miss out on superannuation savings altogether.

Once upon a time this wouldn’t have mattered much, because men were expected to support their wives and provide them with lifelong security. These days, we are each an economic island, separate from others.

To make matters worse, women live longer and so will have to support themselves for longer on less. Do we have to choose? An elegant summer dress to wear a few times in the gorgeous prime of life - or two months of meals at age 87? Of course, there’s always the remote chance a vintage clothing shop might buy the dress for hard cash after four or five decades …

It’s a real problem, shopping v saving. As University of New South Wales researcher Dr Diana Olsberg puts it, “it is difficult to encourage people to save, save, save in an advertising saturated environment where people are bombarded with consumer messages to spend, spend, spend”.

But, on a positive note, some recent research attributes women’s greater longevity to the health benefits of shopping (seriously): shopping keeps you physically active, challenges the brain and helps maintain a positive self image.

So while it may cost more to be a woman, perhaps it pays to spend, after all.