The (missed) profitability of a major minority and why we need to be paying attention

Imagine living in a world where a slight minority (49.7% worldwide) or even a majority (50.4% in the U.S.) equates to a definitive minority experience... Oh right, we're in that world.

50 years since U.S. women were granted financial freedom (see: Equal Credit Opportunity Act), the country as a whole has yet to realize the full economic potential of women. Heck, we barely cater to the economic impact they currently have.

Thus, welcome to the world where despite not being a statistical minority, women are still living a minority experience. That minority experience, as it turns out, not only leaves a lot to be desired for consumers, but a lot of money left on the table.

Missed products

You know the saying "women are just smaller men"? You're right; no one says that. But no one has to, because the world we live in is saying that loud and clear already when the default for products is based off men.

Let's start with unisex sizing. We all know it's not actually unisex; It's men's sizing relabeled as "unisex". But nothing about the size has actually changed to meet the dimensional differences between the sexes.

The problem is further exacerbated when placed into the context of missing the target audience. The last WNBA game I went to, I dropped by the fan store afterwards and was shocked to see that 90%, maybe even 95% of adult clothing were unisex. The adult population in attendance at the game was most definitely not 95% male. In fact, the WNBA itself has reported that over 75% of the audience at games are female. So why not take the extra time to ensure that your products properly fit the majority of your audience? It's a well documented issue; every sales person I talked to mentioned consumers have asked for more women's sized clothing. And yet, the organization has missed the mark on meeting their consumer's asks and misses in more sales in the meantime.

Men's sizing being the default shows up beyond clothes. In equipment where men and women have anatomical differences, the default again becomes men. Take bicycles, for example. Considerations for how weight is dispersed and proportional differences like reach and handlebar difference are, by default, based off of men. Few women-specific products exist in the market, where at least a quarter of the customer set is female.

When we fail to ensure products work for half of the population, we fail to sell the right types of products. The capacity for more sales could've simply been unlocked by a deeper probing into whether products are working for women.

Missed marketing opportunities

Beyond the products themselves, marketing is another area where companies are missing out. Women are less represented in marketing yet make most of the purchases. Research from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media show that in advertising, men get 4x as much screen time as women, and speak 7x more than women. Yet here's the interesting part: Women are the driving force for economic decisions. 70-80% of all consumer purchasing, to be exact.

Even in areas where men are considered traditional consumers of a product, women are showing up as consumers but not being proportionally recognized in marketing. For example, 62% of all new cars are bought by women. Yet it is a well-known fact that the automobile industry is highly focused on targeting men still, with masculinized campaigns from off-roading to highlighting the horsepower.

When we don't market to women, we miss out on them connecting with our brands. It's a miss on them being able to remember us when they're out shopping, and a miss on them potentially picking us up over other brands that maybe did a better job showing them how they fit into women's lives.

Missed sales

It's incredible how much money is left on the table when we don't cater to the diversity of our audiences. Or--in this case--just catering to beyond the default sex. Given women's dominance in purchasing decisions, you'd think we as a whole might recognize that there are further sales we could be missing out on because of our misses in products and marketing.

Some brands are leaning in to serving their female customers better (see: Volvo's E.V.A. Initiative to test driving safety beyond men, or Liv bikes specifically designed around women). But a good chunk of others are still trying to figure out how to appeal to half the market. It's clear that there is still a lot of work to do ahead to ensure that the female experience is properly heard, represented, and solved for. When you underserve your market, you lose out. Specifically, on a slice of the $35 trillion global pie that is waiting to expand with better targeted solutions for women.

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