Pink Tax has been a prominent issue for those who menstruate but now inflation is only making it worse

When they say inflation is upon us, they’re not joking. Students are forced to limit their Fortino’s-turned-Food Basics runs to just the essentials, rethink the frequency of their Uber Eats orders and spend Black Friday at home this year and far away from one’s laptop.  

Inflation is having an enormous impact on low-income households in particular, who spend more than half of their income on daily essential items. Individuals in the top twenty percent of the income quintile on the other hand, only spend about thirty percent on essentials and spend the majority of it on luxury items.  

Did you know that before 2015, period products such as pads and tampons were taxed as luxury items in Canada? It was only on July 1, 2015 that the federal government realized that maybe they shouldn’t be taking advantage of a natural bodily process that individuals can’t control.  

The cherry on top? Inflation impacts the price points for essential items far more than luxury goods. This means that low-income families must make sacrifices that look more like cutting back on essential items like healthy food rather than re-evaluating the purchase of a Starbucks holiday drink.  

For women and those who use feminine products, the consequences of inflation are further exacerbated due to the preexisting pink tax. If you didn’t know already, the pink tax refers to the gender-specific and straight up discriminatory pricing of products that are advertised for those who identify as women.  

Companies love to dangle bright colors, flowers, and passion periwinkle grapefruit-scented products to market toward women while jacking up the prices. These advertisements function to convince those who identify as women, their femininity lies within those products. The next thing you know, women end up paying thirteen per cent more than men for the same essential items.  

In addition to the need for purchasing universal basic hygiene products, women and those who menstruate are faced with the challenge of ensuring their menstrual products are always stocked.  

Did you know that before 2015, period products such as pads and tampons were taxed as luxury items in Canada? It was only on July 1, 2015 that the federal government realized that maybe they shouldn’t be taking advantage of a natural bodily process that individuals can’t control.  

Although taxing menstrual products as essential items was a step in the right direction, this also means that these prices will be affected more as a result of inflation. With poverty disproportionately affecting individuals of color, women and those who menstruate who fall under the same category would face the same hardships, if not more.  

You didn’t think I was done, did you?   

For example, gender-based societal and moral obligations, like being responsible for a disproportionate amount of household shopping, means that women spend longer in stores and are therefore more likely to experience the stress of inflation.  

We can also discuss the already uneven economic recovery from the pandemic that affects women's ability to purchase essential items. The gender wage gap is a problem that somehow keeps getting worse, even at a time where the world is allegedly progressing forward.  

The child care crisis during the pandemic resulted in a decrease in women’s involvement in the labor force and their earnings along with it. Specifically, women with lower-wage jobs, immigrant women and Black women were hit the hardest. Evidently, inflation affects different women through different ways.  

For example, gender-based societal and moral obligations, like being responsible for a disproportionate amount of household shopping, means that women spend longer in stores and are therefore more likely to experience the stress of inflation.  

Without government intervention, these issues will only continue to get worse. Given that inflation has been an issue for the better part of thirty years, the research on the intersectionality of the problem is very limited. Policies need to start keeping up with inflation, meaning that preexisting federal assistance programs must expand to actually live up to the “assistance” part.  

I know that this simply adds on to the never-ending list of issues the world is facing, but I guess that’s what you have to do when you’re constantly left high and dry. So students need to use their voices to help solve such problems. Vote in elections, donate, and support organizations that are fighting against things like period poverty.  

Yoohuyn Park/Production Coordinator

Do grades have to be everything?

By: Hadeeqa Aziz, Contributor

This one is for all the first years. So you’ve heard your grades will drop and you’re rather terrified of what the next couple of years will bring. And rightfully so, because according to data collected by the University of Waterloo, the average Ontario high school student’s grades will likely drop by a factor of 16 percent. Some of you may not worry too much because you’re confident in the way your high school conditioned and prepared you for post-secondary education. 

After all, you’ve earned your way into your program, haven’t you? The feeling of accomplishment is even more incredible now, especially since admissions averages have been steadily increasing over the last few years. For example, according to student observations on r/OntarioUniversities, McMaster’s life sciences gateway program has seen an increase in cutoff averages since 2019, from high 80s to low 90s. 

There’s nothing short of a plethora of reasons to explain these increases, from larger applicant pools to better overall student performances, especially in light of online learning. There’s one factor, however, that remains prominent — one that we all know exists but seldom find the courage to thoroughly talk about: grade inflation. 

It’s a sensitive topic because implying the existence of grade inflation is an implication that not everyone sitting in your lecture hall has rightfully earned their way into their program. The onus, however, is not on the student, but seemingly on the high schools they come from. 

All Ontario universities value grades when assessing high school seniors for undergraduate admissions, taking the form of an average of your top 6 courses in Grade 12. It appears to be the most plausible evaluation tool, as it’s supposedly designed to gauge your competence as an academic. Here’s a shocking revelation though: not all students have been to the same high school. What does this mean? It essentially implies that a 95 percent average at one school may not hold the same value as a 95 percent at another. 

Grade inflation is often rooted in a decrease in academic standards or when faculty don’t have clear expectations of their students. This leads to grade inequality, meaning that equal qualities of work are assigned different grades across schools, departments or courses. 

Many speak to the problematic nature of grade inflation, while others outright deny that it’s even a problem. When inflation leads to increased admissions averages, it sets grade standards to an all-time high, so much so that some career prospects may be taken away from students who fail to reach those standards. 

The process of achieving the ridiculously high grade requirements for the University of Waterloo’s engineering programs, for instance, is not the same for all students. Those who don’t reap the benefits of grade inflation would have to work much harder than those who do. Here, universities risk being unfair to the students who have more rigorous marking standards. And we haven’t even touched upon other factors that contribute to student issues such as socioeconomics, race or geographics. 

Entering university with inflated grades isn’t all that fun either. If inflation leads to misinterpretations of a student’s competence and studying habits, perhaps it can lead to similar misinterpretations on a student’s fitness for their program of entry. Students unprepared for the demands of university education may be more vulnerable to mental health issues such as stress, anxiety and depression. 

In an attempt to be fairer to high school applicants, the University of Waterloo used data from their engineering program to develop a list of what they call “adjustment factors” for each high school. This factor uses a student’s admission average and their first-year average to gauge the effects of grade inflation by measuring the “gap” between the two grades. Essentially, the higher the gap, the higher possibility that the student’s grades were inflated in high school. The faculty supposedly take this adjustment factor into consideration during the admissions process. 

Schools at the top of the list argue that Waterloo’s student sample is too small to reflect the hard work of their teachers and students. From their perspective, it’s quite difficult to collect robust data on inflation and adequately prove such a claim. 
Instead, more individuals wish to see a discussion on whether or not standardized testing can play a role in the solution. Standardizing students, however, comes with its own set of issues and instead, I think most students would appreciate more individualized assessments of their accomplishments. If universities continue to treat grades as “everything,” they’re effectively missing the bigger picture.