… to be ranting about this?

[AhaHa]

Just moved to a new area and noticed that the local dry cleaner has separate price lists for men and women’s items.
It costs more than 10-15% more to dry clean a women’s trouser, shirt, suit, etc. Coats are even more expensive (think 5 pound difference in starting prices!!)

AIBU to think this is completely taking the piss?

I have now checked a few dry cleaner websites and notice that this seems to be standard!

I’m fuming and thinking of these small little ways in which women are still ripped off vs men… drives me nuts!!!!! We pay more for clothes, and then more to have them cleaned, and more for healthcare, and more for sanitary products and hairdressing, and the list just never stops! This must be some form of discrimination!

I get it, some people buy coats with golden buttons and maybe that’s harder to dry clean but surely the starting price should be the same!

I don't understand why women's clothes would be more expensive as they are likely to be smaller/less fabric to clean.

Are they assuming that women's clothes will have frills and furbelows to complicate the clean?

You're right and I get very exercised about haircuts. It should just e.g. standard shirt, shirt with some kind of fussy detail/hard to clean, not to which sex the shirt belongs to. Same with haircuts, I honestly don't think my mid length hair having a trim is 30% more difficult (and certainly isn't more time consuming), than a guy having his hair cut. I also see it as discrimination, for example if someone went in with a shirt and they said, oh you're from an ethnic minority, that will be 10 pounds more, there would rightly be uproar. Or, oh, you're over 60, it'll cost more. But for women it seems ok to discriminate. Sigh.

I’m now thinking of going in and pretending to be a man.
”Yes, these are man’s trousers”.
”What do you mean I don’t look like a man?? You’re getting dangerously close to committing a crime with these hateful statements!”

Devil advocate - purely from personal experience, mens clothing is far easier to launder than women’s. It’s not just about the cut, (although the pleats and overall reduction in size is time consuming to iron in comparison between the two, it’s also about stains. Men do not tend to have blood/makeup which are harder to remove than food/sweat.

Wether the extra time and resources used equates to the price differential, I don’t know. Is it fair - maybe, maybe not, but you can choose not to dry clean via a dry cleaners. The can be some success in laundering them yourself at home. Wool items can generally be done by hand, suits can be hand sponged etc. Although I guess it depends how much space and time you have and what price you put on those two commodities.

@Alphabet1spaghetti2 I get it but
a) not all women stain their clothes with makeup and blood
b) many men have accidents shaving too
c) you can differentiate price based on complexity of cut and stains, not on gender…

and yes I could do it at home but why must women always take on more and more work nust to level the playing field a bit? Surely we already do more than men on average (particularly women who work alongside their partners) so the whole point of it being a fairer world is to stop discriminating and piling more crap on women “just because they could do x y z”. Why should we have to when men don’t?

Huh?? I never have blood stains on my clothes and if I did I would soak them myself. Surely if clothes are heavily stained then you can arrange your pricing model accordingly and not based on the wearer of said clothes.

OP- just drop your clothes in and say you identify as a man? Problem solved lol

Because it easier to have a price board, rather than inspect every single item as it come in. Do you want to be a customer waiting in a queue, whilst the customer in front has all their laundry inspected in front of everyone else in the shop? Embarrassing for one customer and frustrating for all customers.

Yes men do have shaving accidents - but they are a lot smaller area to deal with and are are easier as they are all blood spots rather than a mix of bodily fluids and blood to deal with. Plus men’s clothes are still easier and quicker to launder.

Both men and women can do their own laundry at home or take it to a laundry. That’s not a business problem, that’s a relationship problem if only
one party deals with laundry either at home or taking to a dry cleaners or laundry service.

If you don’t want to do it don’t, then pay for it to be done.

@Rickrolypoly just because you deal with your own heavily soiled times, doesn’t mean everyone does, and a lot do not.

You can identify as whatever you want, it doesn’t stop your clothes being either male items or female items according to the price board of the dry cleaners.

Your math just aint mathing sorry!

It is very easy to apply a pricing model which states Jackets 10/Euro Trousers 15/Euro etc. Additional charge for heavily soiled items.
This makes more sense surely that assuming all women have soiled their trousers (wtf). I never get blood on my trousers or have heavily soiled shirts and jackets with make up so why should I be penalised simply because I am a woman?

You’re not penalised! Just choose not to use them and diy at home.

The business model clearly works for the dry cleaners and the industry as a whole. Don’t like it either set up a competing model or diy at home. The current model of business will only change if they start to go out of business - which clearly isn’t happening.

As for my maths not mathing - I work in a laundry (not a dry cleaners). Ladies clothing takes a lot longer to process from start to finish than mens. Even without the added staining - which happens a lot more than individuals wish to admit or deal with themselves. I would hazard a good guess that the same ‘blindness’ exists with commercial laundries and their customers.

but yes, a commercial dry cleaners could pull out and inspect everyone’s laundry in front of the customer and embarrass them just so that you have a bespoke price list. Or they could price everything at the higher price point and be pushed out of business by other dry cleaners charging lower for certain items of clothing…… neither is going to happen, so different pricing as per the current system it is.

If anything they should do it by type of fabric or size of clothing. Surely womenswear is less fabric a lot of the time than mens?
I reckon it's because they perceive that women value their clothes more, so will pay a higher price to rectify a stain.
It's absolutely bullshit though. I guess you just say the person who wears it is intersex?!
Loads of my clothes are not specific womenswear.

Of course you are penalising women in this instance!

Can you explain to me why a trousers worn by a woman and one worn by a man would take any longer to clean if neither were stained?

If I take clothes to a dry cleaner they always take then out and look at them so I have no problem with this.

Also- can't edit my post for some reason but just wanted to add that charging different prices based on the sex of the wearer is not normal where I live.

@BobbyBiscuits whilst ladies clothing maybe be physically smaller, it is that smallness plus additional darting and pleating, mixing of fabrics and possible extra care needed with adornments, (such as pearl buttons) which causes them to be more time consuming when it come to ironing. They need to be hand ironed and hand pressed as opposed to machine pressed.

@Rickrolypoly the cut of ladies trousers and indeed generally ladies clothing as opposed to the cut of men’s items can make them more time consuming when it comes to ironing and finishing.
Just because you have no problems with your clothing being inspected, doesn’t mean that same feeling applies to others.

Then you aren’t being discriminated or indeed penalised against if they don’t charge you any differently !

You cannot edit posts if using the app apparently. Or if you leave it longer than five minutes(?) if using the web page. (According to another post elsewhere on the forum.)

I know I am not- that was my point.

The point @Alphabet1spaghetti2 seems to be missing is that charging women more for laundering the same items is discrimination plain and simple.
In fact, someone should just tackle this industry for what is clearly an unfair and discriminatory practice.
What’s more, the lack of transparency on pricing is pretty shocking. The items never end up being laundered at the price advertised on the board, it’s always “blouse from 5.99” but in the end the most simple blouse always ends up being 7.50 for some obscure reason and once you’ve taken the time to go to the dry cleaner you don’t really want to take you big bag and shop around elsewhere (for context I’m in London where you have a wide choice of dry cleaners)

At any rate, from now on I will definitely be identifying as male when I go to the dry cleaners.
I might just paint a fake moustache for the fun of it and see how that goes down.

I’m not missing your point at all. But you do seem to missing my suggestions as to why pricing may be different. Clothing tailored for the female body takes more time to launder and often has more stubborn stains than that tailored for a male body. That takes time and human labour as opposed to mechanical - as human labour has to be paid for, usually by the hour, so costs will be increased.

An individual can identify as whatever they want - it doesn’t change the fact that clothing is tailored differently for males as opposed to females. That tailoring does make a time difference when it comes to laundry, which is really evident when you are doing commercial quantities of laundry - even omitting any and all stains of whatever origin. If you do want to get the cheaper pricing - wear make clothing. Identify as whatever you want - but just wear and take in male-body tailored cloth in to be dry cleaned.

Women's clothing is usually made from more delicate fabric and will have adornment, finishes, trim, darting etc that men's clothing doesn't usually have. It will require more hand finishing which will obviously cost more. Think silk, viscose, chiffon, lace etc and shell, MOP etc buttons, embroidered detailing, darting to shape.

Women's clothing is generally far more complex in the construction to shape it. Men's clothing not so much except for jackets, which have a lot of structural elements. I sew, so I learnt this the hard way.

@Alphabet1spaghetti2 of course, that can definitely be true. I guess it would almost be fairer if they priced it by eye on how complex the design, cut and embellishments were. It would still mean some womens wear cost more but not all.

@BobbyBiscuits Good point! But then it comes down to individual perceptions of what is or isn’t difficult to launder and where do you draw the line? Are pleats more difficult than mop buttons? Is a size 8 more difficult than a size 0 in the same size? Is linen harder than nylon, how quick can the iron change from wool to linen setting etc etc. So, probably easier (and quicker?!) to just differentiate between the ladies / gentlemen’s and then shirts/trousers/skirts/dresses/ t shirts/ pants/ socks.

I buy few clothes that are dry clean only because I'm not interested in spending time taking stuff to the dry cleaner. I am pretty good at laundry and ironing, including stain removal.

While I understand some women's clothes may be more complex in construction, materials and adornment, if I get a plain grey or navy jacket cleaned, I don't see why it should cost more than a man's plain grey or navy jacket. (Mine are women's jackets.) I can see there could be some differentiation on fabric - wool, linen, polyester or whatever - but otherwise not.

Fabric is not usually sex-separated, although I have heard arguments about women's fashion being less well-made than men's and of poorer quality, often thinner materials. There are sometimes threads asking where we can find decent thickness t-shirts, for example. i think probably most of us don't want sheer clothing, unless it's specifically meant to be, like georgette or organdy or chiffon. So we're penalised first on poorer quality clothing in the first place, and then on higher cleaning prices.

As a test get a male to bring your jackets/trousers in for cleaning and then claim them as his. See if they object or price differently.