Read the following passage and answer the questions. Gender-based pricing, also known as “pink tax,” is an upcharge on products traditionally intended for women which have only cosmetic differences from comparable products traditionally intended for men. **In other words, it’s not actually a tax**. It’s an “income-generating scenario for private companies who found a way to make their product look either more directed to or more appropriate for the population and saw that as a moneymaker,” explains Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, a lawyer, vice president for the Brennan School of Justice at NYU School of Law, and co-founder of Period Equity Yet pink tax is not a new phenomenon. The issue was **delineated** more finely in 2015 when the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs released a report about price **disparities** for 794 comparable products from 91 brands sold throughout the city. The report examined five different industries, such as personal care products or senior/home healthcare products. These **encompassed** 35 product categories, such as bodywash or shampoo. In every single ofthose five industries, consumer goods marketed to women and girls cost more. The same was the case in all but five of the 35 product categories. Researchers looked at 106 products in the toys and accessories category and found that, on average, those intended for girls were priced 7 percent higher. NYC’s report found women faced an average price difference of 13 percent for personal care products among the 122 products compared in the study. And the authors aptly noted that these items, such as shaving gel and deodorant, are the ones purchased most frequently compared with other categories — meaning that the ____________ add up over time. While this is unfair for all those shopping for these products, that 13 percent price increase hits women and girls who come from lower income households even harder. Legislative attempts, however, could correct the pink tax. In 1995, then-Assemblywoman Jackie Speier successfully passed a bill that forbade gender pricing of services, such as haircuts. Choose the word that has a similar meaning to the word **"disparities"** as used in the passage.

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**Solution:**

1. The word **"disparities"** in the passage refers to differences or inequalities in prices between products marketed to women and men.

2. Among the options:
   - **Variance** means a difference or deviation, which closely matches the meaning of disparities.
   - **Authentic** means genuine, which is unrelated.
   - **Delusion** means a false belief.
   - **Dilemma** means a difficult choice.
   - **Ambiguity** means uncertainty or vagueness.

3. Therefore, the word **variance** is the closest synonym to **disparities** in this context.

**Answer:** variance

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