From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/about-time-women-and-men-got-charged-same-rates-hair-cuts
From Denmark to New York City, governments are cracking down on the practice of overcharging women for haircuts.
By Laura Gottesdiener
January 23, 2013
Denmark, the feminist paradise of subsidized childcare and socialized healthcare, upped the ante this year with a new gender equality ruling to outlaw expensive women’s haircuts.
The Board of Equal Treatment (great title for the board, by the way), fined a salon that charged more for women’s haircuts than for men’s haircuts, effectively calling the price differential illegal.
The industry has all but threatened to bear their scissors in protest, denouncing the ruling because women’s hair generally takes longer to cut than men’s, while men often have to get more frequent cuts to keep their short styles.
The ruling does not bar salons from charging different prices for different cuts, but merely the practice of denoting the price differences by gender. Hairdressers warn that sorting out these differences without naming gender, however, could cause “price chaos,” which–given the actual economic chaos in Europe right now–feels like something of an exaggeration.
While this ruling might strike women in the U.S. as yet another reason to buy a warm coat and catch a flight across the Atlantic immediately, New York City has actually long had a similar (although little-enforced) provision to protect against haircutting discrimination.
Continue reading at: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/about-time-women-and-men-got-charged-same-rates-hair-cuts
