Our political and economic thought leaders are constantly lecturing us on the need to engage with the incredibly important emerging economies. Yet there is an global economy that exceeds them all in terms of scale, financial opportunity and diversity, but for some reason, it receives scant attention from the industry that is supposed to give business its voice.
It is not Brazil or China or India. It is, of course, the female economy.
For years we’ve thrown around statistics such as women make 81% of purchase decisions (or is it now up to 87%?). And it’s not all shoes, sanitary products and handbags. Women play a greater role in areas that we’ve traditionally seen as secret men’s business. Women routinely make the decision when it comes to buying things like homes, cars and (this’ll hurt fellas) big-screen TVs. Women are even dominating hardware purchases – mostly because they’re tired of waiting for a generation of white collar men with no practical skills to put up the shelves we asked them about over a month ago.
Women too are particularly social shoppers, and we’re not referring to the Saturday afternoon retail therapy you might be assuming. Women are increasingly using social media and product forums to flex their consumer muscles and engage and exchange in a dialogue.
All of which are compelling reasons to actively place more women in senior roles in the Comms Industry. Yet these numbers are not reflected in the make-up of the executive teams or boards who are charged with creating communications that speak to these power purchasers – women.
It’s actually pretty rare to see certain women in the communications we create, particularly women of a certain age. If you think about how rarely you see a woman over 50 advertising anything other than incontinence pads, arthritis relief and political party policy, you could be excused for thinking all older women are leaky, gnarly rednecks.
Still not convinced that we all need more senior women? Well, let’s talk about an even more staggering event transpiring before our eyes, women not only shop more but in the not to distant future will have a greater share of money to spend too.
According to some predictive modeling by the nice folks at the Boston Consulting Group, women will control the wealth of the planet in coming years. Partly because, they’re doing quite all right in their careers thank you very much, but also because they’re experiencing a double windfall – their husbands and parents are dying. (We’re not suggesting it’s a plot, it’s just what’s happening!)
It is estimated that this will be the greatest transference of wealth in history. Some analysts estimate that by 2022 women will control two thirds of wealth on the entire planet.
So if ever there was a motivation to address the gender imbalance in the corporate world, surely this is it. Perhaps it starts by paying a little attention. It is, after all, what women have been asking for, for millennia.
Warren Buffet recently said that women were the great economic hope for the US; he asked Americans to imagine what the economy might be capable of with 100% of its talent truly harnessed. We think he is on to something.
Industries that are reinventing themselves and trying to reinforce their relevance might go a long way towards achieving these goals by having women on top.
DAN GREGORY & KIERAN FLANAGAN
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