Women suffer the most due to monopolization
Brantly and Oliver ’21 [Amy T. Brantly is a founding partner at Kesselman Brantly Stockinger LLP specializing in antitrust and business litigation, Jennifer M. Oliver is a partner at MoginRubin LLP where she specializes in antitrust litigation, merger control work, and private litigation, Califronia Lawyers Association, “Antitrust and Unfair Competition Law”, https://calawyers.org/publications/antitrust-unfair-competition-law/competition-spring-2021-vol-31-no-1-the-correlation-between-antitrust-enforcement-and-gender-equality/#fr1, Vol 31, No 1, Page 115-115]
America’s monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies, and its citizens’ increasing reliance on their services, are drawing scrutiny at levels unseen for more than a century. Like industrial concentration, gender inequality, and especially economic inequality, is similarly a well-known cause of increasing concern in this country.
Parallels can be drawn between gender inequality and behavior from America’s dominant firms. Gender and competition policy are inextricably intertwined; persistent unjust discrimination in a concentrated market may be a by-product of market power. Dominant firms exclude new entrants from a market, whereas gender inequity and biases exclude women from full participation in the economy and workplace. Gender inequity and biases can deprive firms of the benefits of women’s diverse experiences and viewpoints, just as monopolies and their ilk can deprive consumers of the benefits of innovative new competitors.
There is correlation between these two problems as well. One problem exacerbates the other. Start by considering the roles women play in the economy as consumers, workers, and entrepreneurs.
First, women bear the brunt of anticompetitive and monopolistic behaviors in their role as consumers. Firms with market power have the ability to impose elevated prices with fewer competitive restraints. Without competition, a monopoly’s price is the market price. Even when faced with high prices, consumers often cannot substitute the monopoly’s product for a more affordable alternative. Supracompetitive pricing—the classic measure of antitrust harm—disproportionately affects women, because women drive a staggering 70-80% of all consumer purchasing in this country. 3
Women also find themselves the targets of price discrimination more often than their male counterparts, a relic of the outdated notion that women are spendthrift "shopaholics." One study conducted by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs found that products marketed towards women and girls cost an average of 7 percent more than those marketed towards boys and men.4 Researchers have dubbed this phenomenon the "pink tax," and it is estimated to cost the average woman $1,351 per year.5