Menstrual products, pregnancy, menopause: 'It can cost up to €12,000 a year to be a woman'

From menstruation to pregnancy to menopause, at every stage of a woman's life it costs. Joyce Fegan on the financial burden that comes with simply being a female in Ireland today

We asked a sample of 125 women of all ages in Ireland how much they spent.

There is the endless debate around the cost of living, but what about the unique cost of being a woman?

It can cost up to €12,000 a year to be a woman in Ireland today. And that’s separate from everyday adult costs such as housing, food, fuel and electricity, or even entertainment.

From menstrual products to the cost of pregnancy, and from annual hair care to monthly spends on creams or treatments, it can cost women up to an extra €12,099 a year to care for themselves compared with their male counterparts.

To arrive at this figure we looked at expenses across nine specific categories that affect women based on their sex and gender.

These nine female-related costs are: menstrual products and associated pain relief; reproductive health from the prescription pill to the coil and menopause care; fertility; pregnancy and postpartum; bras; aesthetic beauty treatments such as Botox or fillers; monthly treatments such as nails or eyebrows or waxing; daily skin and hair care such as serums and conditioners; and hair styling.

We asked a sample of 125 women of all ages in Ireland how much they spent in each of these areas, and included national and international data to arrive at our figure of €12,099.

Some of the responses from women included: “God, it’s costly being a woman”; “it’s shocking how much I spend when I add it all up”; “you should never add it all up”; “I’d be loaded if I wasn’t a woman”; “actually mad when you think of how much you spend on all that”; and “Jeez, the cost of menopause”. And one woman joked that she didn’t see a question related to the cost of childcare or household cleaning services – domestic areas that are statistically proven to be covered by women.

We also included national data on how much women and girls spend on menstrual products and international research on the annual cost of bras.

Zoning in on each area, starting with menstruation, those who have a menstrual cycle spend a minimum of €121 a year on period products and associated pain relief. That’s Irish government data from last year. While women’s cycles vary widely, the government data showed that most women and girls will have 12-13 periods a year, with some using up to 22 tampons or towels per cycle.

A 2018 Plan International survey in Ireland found that 50% of girls aged 12-19 reported occasional experience of period poverty. Scotland is the only country in the world to provide free period products.

Reproductive health was the second area of cost we asked women about, so that’s spending on things like menopause care and medication, or the prescription pill or coil implant as means of birth control. The women we spoke to said they were spending up to €150 a year on their reproductive health. A total of 25% of the women said they spent nothing, but of the 75% who did incur a cost here, the average spend was €75 annually.

In terms of aesthetic beauty, for increasingly popular treatments such as botox or fillers, women

said they spend up to, if not more than, €500 a year. While 77% said they spent nothing on these treatments, the average spend by the 23% who did was €200 a year.

A far more common spend for the women we spoke to was monthly treatments like eyelash extensions or tinting, nail painting or facials. Women here estimated they spend up to €1,800 annually. And while 24% said they spend nothing, for the 76% who did, it costs them on average €900 a year.

Joyce Fegan. Photograph Moya Nolan

Moving away from beauty to health, we looked at fertility, asking women the expense they incurred in trying to start a family. The HSE says that around one in six heterosexual couples in Ireland may experience infertility. Some of the women we spoke to said they spend up to, if not more than €3,000 a year on their fertility, with the average spend costing €1,250.

In terms of women who do become pregnant, there are similar costs incurred here, with some respondents saying they spent up to, if not more than €3,000 on their pregnancy or postpartum care. Costs here can include blood work, extra scans, birth preparation courses, acupuncture, prenatal yoga classes, or prenatal vitamins that cost on average €23 a month, lactation consultants or pelvic floor physiotherapy, never mind the cost of private obstetric care in Ireland.

Of the women who incurred a cost for their pregnancy or postpartum period, the average spend was €1,500.

An additional cost here, that we did not include in our top line figure of €12,099, is the cost incurred by some women who experience hyperemesis gravidarum, a debilitating condition of extreme sickness that lasts the whole pregnancy. Hyperemesis Ireland says around one in 100-150 pregnant women will be admitted to hospital due to the dehydration and malnutrition that hyperemesis can cause. A prescription drug called Cariban that women can take to alleviate symptoms can cost up to €280 a month, so €2,520 over nine months. It’s free in the NHS and costs about €12 a packet over the counter in Spain. For some women with hyperemesis, there is also the added factor of being unable to be in paid employment, so severe is the condition.

On the less serious side of the spend spectrum is the money women spend monthly on skin and hair care products from serums to toners and from hair conditioners to face moisturisers. Women told us they can spend up to, if not more than €2,400 annually on these products, with the average annual spend across 98% of women coming in at €900.

Similarly for hair care, so from cuts to styling, and treatments to colour, 98% of women spend on average €400 a year on their hair, with some spending up to, if not more than, €1,000.

Finally, for bras, international research shows that women spend about €32 on each bra they purchase, and that’s for approximately four bras a year. Therefore, women can spend on average €128 on bras a year.

The maximum spend in each of those nine areas for women comes in at €12,099 a year, and the average spend stands at €5,474, depending at what stage of life a woman is at.

Aside from what goes out, there is also what doesn’t come in, when it comes to women and money.

For example, right now, the hourly median pay gap in Ireland is 15.47%, according to financial services firm JP Morgan – so that’s men earning 15.47% more than women per hour. There is also a bonus gap, that gets much less airtime, it stands at 24%.

And we also have the pension gap. The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) found a gap of 35% between men and women’s pensions in Ireland – over a year, a retired woman gets almost €8,000 less than men.

Career interruptions due to caring responsibilities are the main reason women end up with less in their private pension pots.

Which brings us on to the cost of care. Globally it is women and girls who undertake more than 75% of unpaid care work in the world according to an Oxfam report in 2020. In Ireland, we have women putting in 38m hours of unpaid care work every week. That adds at least €24bn of value to our economy annually. This unpaid work equates to 12.3% of the Irish economy.

One other factor that affects women’s earnings is maternity leave. According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) only 54% of employers here give maternity pay. So while new mothers can receive the State maternity benefit of €262 over 26 weeks, about six months, their salaries are greatly affected where their employer does not offer a top-up. And not all women are entitled to the State benefit, only those who have made PSRI contributions.

Amanda Grace. Picture: Eadaoin Curtin

Female-related costs incurred and deficits from gaps and care work included, it means many women end up with less financial leverage, or to say it another way, power. And yet, according to Forbes, women make 85% of consumer purchases. So, female finances are what keeps many billionaire dollar industries afloat.

And it is on this fulcrum that Irish life coach, Amanda Grace, daughter of the late comedian Brendan Grace, healed her “money story”.

“A few years ago I went through a tough time, and I gained weight. My reaction to gaining that weight was punishment, I stopped dyeing my hair. ‘I am not spending money on you anymore’, is what I was essentially saying to myself.

“There are lots of women out there who might think the way to rail against this [the cost of being a woman] is to stop spending, but that’s depriving myself, that’s depriving people who I do business with,” says Amanda.

“Instead, it’s about divesting and understanding the value of your money. Money and cash is energy, it’s a valuable source of energy,” she adds.

The life coach, whose work is about showing women their own power, says it’s about getting “intentional” about our spending.

“How much money are women spending on people-pleasing? Am I doing this for me? Or, am I doing this for the world at the expense of myself?

“What’s the intentionality of the investment?” asks Amanda, who offers one-to-one coaching as well as workshops on topics such as this. (She can be found on Instagram @amandagrace.ie)

Someone who greatly echoes this sentiment is health psychologist and wellbeing specialist Shauna Farrell.

She looks at worth through the prism of self worth, not financial worth, when it comes to money spent as a result of certain beauty standards.

“It’s no secret that beauty standards imposed on women are costly. What is more unknown, and benefits from it being so, is the cost of diet culture. Diet culture is a social expectation that conveys how we should eat and look and expresses that if our bodies look a certain way – ie thin – we are more accepted, desirable, and loved,” says Shauna.

“However, in my opinion the real cost of diet culture is much deeper. For some women, diet culture has cost them their self-worth and their ability to live a life free from the restraint of constantly worrying about what they are eating, what their body looks like and if they are enough,” she adds.

The bottom line is that while women’s money supports several billion dollar businesses globally, the question is if our spends are also an investment in ourselves.

• We questioned 125 women, aged 18-48, all residing in Ireland and with different living scenarios from married to single and from parents to child-free.