Record Label Charges Women Less to Offset Gender Pay Gap

A self-described "radically feminist and willfully obstinate" record label in Portland, Ore., is charging female customers 77 percent of what they charge men -- "a good place to start," their owner says.

M'Lady's Records, a small label that releases a diverse collection of rockabilly, loud rock and off-beat avant pop, says the move is meant to offset the difference in pay between men and women. As the difference is popularly described, women make .77 on the dollar versus their male counterparts.

The move isn't a gimmick, owner Brett Lyman says -- he plans to keep the pricing disparity in place "until that number gets tuned up and/or we go down in flames."

"We're just tired of record labels being these petit bourgeois institutions that don't really have much impact on their communities," Lyman told NPR. "Most just seem inert to me; vague curatorial exercises largely rooted in making money or pacifying some parochial sub-culture (the latter is particularly popular here in the Pacific Northwest)."

M'Lady's is the latest business to offer such a discount, after a bar in Brooklyn and a Pittsburgh pop-up shop both made headlines by giving women 77 percent off. It is, however, the only business we've seen to incorporate the discount in their permanent, every-day business model.