Women pay up to 2.6x more than men for identical dry cleaning on plain button-down shirts

A CBS News undercover investigation sent male and female producers to the same dry cleaners with structurally identical plain button-down shirts. In more than half of businesses visited, the woman was charged at least double -- in one case $7.50 versus $2.85 for the same service. This is not a difference in labor: these were the same fabric, same construction, same size range. It matters because the cumulative cost over a professional woman's career amounts to thousands of dollars in excess spending on an essential service, effectively a tax on gender presentation. The structural root cause is that most dry cleaners price by gendered category ('men's shirt' vs. 'women's blouse') rather than by garment characteristics (fabric, size, construction). Only three jurisdictions -- New York City, California, and Miami-Dade County -- have laws explicitly prohibiting gender-based service pricing, and enforcement is virtually nonexistent.