This doesn’t seem like the best business model.
<100 is a traveling pop-up shop that is supposed to raise awareness for “gender wage equality.” The shop offers work from female artists, makers, and entrepreneurs from throughout the U.S. and it is priced to reflect the wage gap in it’s respective location, according to its website.
The problem? It’s entirely based on a flawed premise.
The prevailing statistic thrown around on the national level — and repeated way too often this week for Equal Pay Day — is that women earn just 77 or 78 cents to the dollar that men earn.
Of course, this blanket point doesn’t factor in the different career choices men and women make, the hours they work or the fields they work in. And advocates of the “Equal Pay” myth don’t care. They prefer absurd demonstrations like <100.
The pop up shop’s first installation took place in Pennsylvania, Refinery 29 reported, where they consider the wage gap to be even “worse” than the national average — women earn 76 percent of what men earn.
To fix this problem through a female-approved activity like shopping, all male customers at the shop will be charged 100 percent of the retail price of any item, while “women and those who identify as women” will be charged 76 percent of this price, according to the website.
“It’s incredible how deeply unconscious biases still permeate the ways in which we perceive (and value) women versus men,” Elana Schlenker, the shop owner, told Refinery 29. “I hope the shop’s pricing helps to underscore this inherent unfairness and to create space for people to consider why the wage gap still exists.”
For my money, I’ll probably just choose to shop elsewhere….but these advocates don’t seem to take my choices into account anyway.
