A recent study revealed that in eBay, women make 20 percent less than men on the average when both sell exactly the same new product.
In a more concrete example, a male seller can get $310 for selling a brand new smartphone, while a woman seller would only get $250. That usually happens even if both male and female sellers have the same exact descriptions of the smartphone.
The study, published on Friday, showed that for every dollar a man earns in eBay, a woman can only make as much as 80 cents for the same new product. But when it comes to used goods, the gap is smaller, but still men earn more than women. For used products, women earn 97 cents as against men's 1 dollar.
Data from eBay were examined by Tali Regev from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya and Tamar Kricheli-Katz from the University of Tel Aviv. They examined the data on the U.S. sales connected to 420 most popular consumer items.
"We were not surprised by the existence of the gender price gap, but we were a little surprised by its magnitude," the authors said in an email to the Los Angeles Times.
These concerned products were taken from a sampling of different product categories and covered the period between 2009 and 2012.
The report, published in the Journal Science Advances, also showed that women outsold men in certain consumer items including toys for pets and baby products. They also got higher 'star' ratings from their customers.
eBay customers can easily guess the gender of the seller simply by noting their usernames and the types of products they are selling.
"If I'm selling an iPhone, but also my shoes and a purse, it'll be relatively easy to identify me as a woman," Kricheli-Katz said in an interview. "And the more items I sell, the more accurately people can categorize me," she added.
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