Marketing to Women in the 21st Century — We Can’t Be What We Can’t See

15 min readJan 11, 2022

Women hold 83 percent of the purchasing power and as a result, one would assume they impact and benefit from the products in that market. Surprisingly, reality differs. Product research, testing, development, and pricing are all designed with men representing humanity. Not only is this annoying and unjust but these practices have deadly outcomes. Women are 47 percent more likely to get seriously injured in a car crash and more likely to overmedicate (while following doctor’s orders) because of a data gap on women and lack of inclusion throughout testing. Gender bias is also the answer to why it took 5,000 years to put wheels on a suitcase and over 100 to commercialize the hybrid car. Additionally, in product pricing, 30 out of 35 categories marketed to women have a higher price tag than the equivalent item marketed to men.

How can this be? A key factor is that not even 3 percent of venture capital goes to companies founded or co-founded by women. Despite research showing that these groups create equally or even a better return on investment. Similar trends are reality in general business and politics.

But there are movements making promises of a brighter future. The younger generation, Gen Z, prioritize purpose as both employers and customers and single women are increasingly managing wealth and are more likely to share that financial power with other underrepresented groups. At the same time, gender is becoming a more fluid concept and the right use of technology can increase the speed of gender equality, when trained correctly.

Power: The Difference Between Men and Women in Business and Consumer Decisions

Historically, women have held responsibility for the home and still direct 83 percent of consumption in the United States, both in buying power and influence (Beyond the VC funding gap, 2019). With such a dominant number, it is shocking that this power does not result in products and services researched, designed, priced, and marketed to benefit this customer segment. Why is that?

“In 2019, 2.8 percent of funding went to women-led startups; in 2020, that fell to 2.3 percent. Though 2.8 percent might seem embarrassingly low, it was an all-time high.”

“In 2019, 2.8 percent of funding went to women-led startups; in 2020, that fell to 2.3 percent. Though 2.8 percent might seem embarrassingly low, it was an all-time high” (Bittner & Lau, 2021). Logically, the low number of investments should stem from data-driven results showing that women founded start-ups provide a lower return on investment. It does not. Women founded, and co-founded start-ups generate 10 percent more in cumulative revenue over a five-year period: $730,000 compared with $662,000 (Abouzahr et al., 2021).

Morgan Stanley calls the funding gap to female and multicultural entrepreneurs a “missed trillion-dollar opportunity.” It stems from a belief, held by 55+ and white men, that maximizing returns while investing in these segments is not possible alternatively they don’t agree nor disagree (Beyond the VC funding gap, 2019).

Not only does diversity correlate with high financial return on investment, but diverse leadership is also linked to innovation, a key for long-term competitive edge. “Companies that reported above-average diversity on their management teams also reported innovation revenue that was 19 percentage points higher than that of companies with below-average leadership diversity — 45 percent of total revenue versus just 26 percent (Lorenzo et al., 2021).

That’s the business world, does it differ from our political country leaders? Surely, they must be representative of the world’s diverse population to consider various perspectives. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Globally, 5.9 percent of all countries have a woman as head of state and 6.7 percent a woman leading the government. The U.S. ranks number 67 on the number of women in Congress, with 27.3 percent in the Lower house and 25.0 percent in The Upper house, or Senate (Women in Politics 2021, 2021).

With these disproportionate numbers of who’s in power, it is not strange that research, laws, products, services, marketing, and pricing are not benefitting women. But it is unacceptable that they are directly harming a group making up half the world’s population.

Market Research and Testing: The Data Gap on Women Kills

Before products are created, priced, and marketed they are researched and tested. Partly, to understand the market opportunity and ensure that the product works. To include diverse test segments is key since products can have different effects on different people. Take cars for example, globally, car crashes more often involve men and hence they dominate the numbers of those seriously injured in car accidents. However, a woman involved in a crash is “47% more likely to be seriously injured than a man, and 71% more likely to be moderately injured, even when researchers control for factors such as height, weight, seat-belt usage, and crash intensity. She is also 17% more likely to die” (Perez, 2020).

A woman involved in a crash is “47% more likely to be seriously injured than a man, and 71% more likely to be moderately injured…She is also 17% more likely to die.”

Why? Because cars are designed using car-crash test dummies based on the body of an average man. Recently, the EU realized this problem and now require an additional test-dummy for one (far from all) specific test. Even in this instance, the dummy created is not representative of women, it is a scaled down male dummy. Secondly, the dummy is only tested in the passenger seat, so data on the impact on female drivers still does not exist (Perez, 2020).

Since the beginning of modern medicine, the male body has represented humanity. Consequently, there is a data gap on women’s bodies that continues to grow as researchers are upholding this research approach. As an example, Valium is taken by two million women per year but, for decades, the drug was marketed primarily towards women. Despite this, it was never tested in randomized clinical trials with female subjects, just like less than half of publicly available prescription drugs are. The majority continue with gender-neutral dosages, which puts women at risk of overdose (Perez, 2020).

Since the beginning of modern medicine, the male body has represented humanity.

Not even animal research includes females on studies of female-prevalent diseases. Out of female-predominant diseases, which specified sex (44 percent), only 12 percent studied female animals. If it is not done, maybe it is not important? On the contrary, in both human and animal studies, when sex is analyzed in cell studies, dramatic differences have been found. As an example, when researchers exposed male and female cells to estrogen and then infected them with a virus, only the female cells fought off the virus. The male cells did not respond to the hormone. The findings inevitably lead to the question: “How many treatments have women missed out on because they had no effect on the male cells on which they were exclusively test?” (Perez, 2020).

Product Development: Gender Biases Stifle Innovation

5,000 years after the wheel was invented, Bernard Sadow created the rolling suitcase. Nobel Prize-Winners and other world-renowned thinkers have pondered the question of how humanity was able to put two men on the moon before we came to invent this product. Two key ideas that they missed are the beliefs about masculinity and femininity: Rolling a suitcase was undesirable for men because it was “unmanly.” Secondly, when a woman travelled, the man accompanying her would carry her luggage too. Of course, assuming women did not travel alone. Because of strong ideas about gender identity, for years, the industry couldn’t see commercial potential in the rolling suitcase. Something we all take for granted when traveling today (Marçal, 2021).

Another example is the elective car. In the 1800s, when electric cars emerged, they were slower and safer and therefore seen as “feminine.” This stifled the market of the electric car and contributed to a world built on petrol-driven cars. This same bias targeted electric starters for petrol-driven cars and cars with a roof, both considered to be “unmanly.” The historian Gjis Mom points out that the rise of gas cars originally was unrelated to them being cheaper to manufacture. However, they became cheaper once they had removed electric cars as competition (Marçal, 2021).

These ideas are so deeply rooted in our minds that we often do not see them. Additionally, we do not (want) to perceive “soft” beliefs about gender to be able to suppress “hard” technological advancement. But they do (Marçal, 2021).

We do not (want) to perceive “soft” beliefs about gender to be able to suppress “hard” technological advancement.
But they do.

Pricing: Higher Prices for Products Marketed to Women

When The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs compared 800 products with female and male versions, defined as “practically identical except for the gender-specific packaging” (Paquette, 2015), they found a strong trend in higher prices for women. Products marketed to females were priced an average of 7 percent higher than similar items for males. Examples show that women’s hair care products are averagely priced 48 percent higher than similar men’s products, and Levi’s charges 29 percent more for the female version of its 501 CT jeans. Exploring 794 products in 35 categories, determined that in 30 of these categories, women pay more (Paquette, 2015).

Some places in the U.S., like New York City, have banned gender discriminatory pricing. Labor intensity must be the foundation of a set price, not gender. Unfortunately, that does not mean these rules are followed. In 2015, DCA issued 129 gender pricing-violations, compared to 118 in 2014. No federal law exists requiring businesses to set gender-equal prices on products (Paquette, 2015).

Trends Impacting the Future of Marketing to Women

The foundation of our economy is built on the idea that, “Wealth is created through productive labor, and that self-interest motivates people to put their resources to the best use.” (What is Adam Smith’s economic theory? 2021). Coined by Adam Smith, the argument is that profits flow from capital investments, and that capital gets directed to where the most profit can be made.” These ideas are core to today’s capitalism (What is Adam Smith’s economic theory? 2021).

What this model excludes is the unpaid work; work that does not only originate in a desire to make money. “The failure to measure unpaid household services is perhaps the greatest gender data gap of all. Estimates suggest that unpaid care work could account for up to 50% of GDP in high-income countries, and as much as 80% of GDP in low-income countries.” (Perez, 2020).

Our idea of economy says that money matters most and that people work for selfish reasons. However, trends show that Gen Z prioritizes companies’ purpose and ethics both in terms of where they want to be employed and who they want to buy from. Data shows that more money are in the hands of women, and that women are more likely to share their wealth. As gender identity becomes increasingly fluid, how will companies be able to charge different prices to different genders? Lastly, how we choose to deploy technology will impact our future immensely. With these trends, hopefully we are headed to a more gender equal future.

Want to Matter to Gen Z? Try Purpose

All generations differ from one another because of the natural flows and current events in the world. Representative of Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, is that they are driven by ethics; “almost two-thirds (63%) of Gen Z feel it is very or extremely important to work for an employer that shares their values” (McWilliams, 2021). Gen Z prioritizes fulfilling careers over making money. “They will remain loyal to companies that align with their personal values and make them feel their contributions are appreciated” (McWilliams, 2021). The same is seen in their relationship with companies as consumers.

Gender as a Fluid Concept

The younger generations believe that traditional gender roles and labels related to the gender binary are outdated. “While the majority of older generations remain skeptical of advertising’s ability to change perceptions of traditional gender roles, GenX and younger are leading the charge and challenging brands to portray more diverse audiences and expressions” (Reynolds, 2021). In people between the ages of 15 and 24, 25 percent expect their gender identification to change during their lifetime. Often even up to two or three times (Friend et al., 2019). In 2016, the estimation of Americans identifying as are trans or gender nonconforming, was 0.6 percent, approximately 1.4 million. (Flores et al., 2016). These numbers show a shift between the more traditional gender roles to more fluidity between the genders. Something some companies are already acting up on. LEGO is one of those companies that have recently removed gender stereotypes from its toys after a global survey found attitudes to play and future careers remain unequal and restrictive (Russell, 2021).

Building Wealth and Sharing it

Recently, there’s a subtle but strong trend in the spread of financial power. Firstly, single women are increasingly managing wealth. Secondly, women with strong financial influence are more generous with their power. This contrasts to the economic foundational belief that the sole purpose of individuals working is because of personal gain, or at least it confronts us to challenge the philosophical question of what personal gain means. McKenzie Scott, the novelist and ex-wife of Amazon CEO and the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, is among the “nearly a dozen single female billionaires who have signed the Giving Pledge, a commitment to give more than half of their fortune to charity during their lifetime (Bakshi, 2021). She states that, “there’s no question in my mind that anyone’s personal wealth is the product of a collective effort, and of social structures which present opportunities to some people and obstacles to countless others” (Bakshi, 2021).

“With so many strides made in closing the gender pay gap, it appears that as women have begun to make more money — still less than men — they only become more generous.”

Once money is in the power of women, research shows that women tend to give away more. One study examining charitable patterns concluded that 51% of single women suggested they would give to charity, compared with 41% of single men. Additionally, through both increased income and during crises, women are more likely to continue to give, whether through volunteering their time and skills or donating money. In other words, “With so many strides made in closing the gender pay gap, it appears that as women have begun to make more money — still less than men — they only become more generous” (Bakshi, 2021).

The Rise of Technology

Technology has the potential to amplify the development of gender equality, that is if trained correctly. Take artificial intelligence, in a 2017 images study, pictures of cooking were over 33% more likely to involve women than men, but algorithms trained on this dataset connected pictures of kitchens with women 68% of the time. Caroline Criado- Perez, the author of ‘Invisible Women’ writes, “the paper also found that the higher the original bias, the stronger the amplification effect, which perhaps explains how the algorithm came to label a photo of a portly balding man standing in front of a stove as female. Kitchen > male pattern baldness.” When we use artificial intelligence or similar emerging technologies to support hiring processes, legal matters, or deciding what news to show in a customer’s social media-feed, it is crucial to recognize that algorithms’ biases will not only reflect the developers,’ it will amplify them (Perez, 2019).

Conclusion

While women today have most of the purchasing power, men have authority in the areas of business and politics. This, despite diversity having been proven to increase return on investment and innovation. In the area of product research and testing, there is a big data gap on all things women as men are treated as the default. This is not only annoying, it is fatal. The consequences of gender biases also show during product development, and how innovation was stifled for both the invention of rolling suitcases and the commercialization of the hybrid car because of widely accepted ideas of masculinity and femininity and their connotations. When pushing a product to the market, even though individual states have regulations against gender discrimination, reality is that some prices are up to 48 percent higher for women than for men.

So, with some quite discouraging data, what will the future look like? Four main trends provide hope. The coming generation demands business to be aligned with their values, with increasingly more money in hands of women, those resources are also shared to a larger extent with traditionally underrepresented groups, the idea of gender is becoming fluid and technology can support the speed of gender equality, if trained correctly.

What world do you want to live in? And what will you do to get there?

What we do know is that something needs to happen. These data gaps, biases and unethical active choices are impacting the lives of women all over the world every day on a scale ranging from minor annoyances to life-threatening events. So, we can choose to hopefully see a better future with coming generations, but we can also start with ourselves, today. What world do you want to live in? And what will you do to get there?

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