March 21st, 2011
E-Tech Women's History Month Newsletter
by Candace Kennedy candace@ethnictechnologies.com
E-Tech Celebrates Women’s History Month
As we look back on past decades, it is clear that a marketing revolution is taking place. Marketing to women has evolved from the homogenized versions of advertising in the 1950’s, to today’s multichannel, culturally competent approach. If we look at a timeline of “stereotypes” we get a clear picture of that changing landscape.
Moving into the next decades, the 1960’s and 70’s saw an important change in thinking about a woman’s role in family and society. It was the beginning of the feminist movement, with women like Gloria Steinem in the forefront. While still at home and in most of America, traditional values prevailed, we were just starting to see and feel that women could not only be in the corporate world, but could also be independent and strong minded.
As we move into the 1980’s and 90’s the idea of the “Superwoman” or “Supermom” appeared at least on the surface to be fully fleshed out. This was the era of movies like Working Girl and Mr. Mom, portraying women as being able to do it all. However, there was still an underlying theme of these women being frazzled, running themselves too ragged, and perhaps having a less than competent partner in life to help her navigate through.
Fast forward to the 2000’s and beyond. Marketing to women in the current day takes the best of all those previous ideas and combines them with cultural competency and recognition of non-traditional family structures. Most importantly, instead of asking “Why market to women?” we need to ask “How can we most effectively influence this important demographic?”
Some important statistics to take away from this discussion:
· 60% of current Internet Users are women
· Women use the internet to do everything: manage and maintain their household, pay bills, do research and socially network.
· 25 million women regularly share advice, knowledge, ideas and opinions via blogs and social networking
· Women are the primary decision makers, or “Chief Purchasing Officers” in most households
· 50% of all do-it-yourself purchases are made by women
· 89% of all household bank accounts are managed by women
· 80% of all healthcare decisions and purchases are done by women
Today’s woman is still evolving, as all the women of past decades were quietly doing as well. In marketing to women today, it is essential to look beyond the “icon” of the decade, and to gain a deeper understanding of how trends will affect the social and socioeconomic status of females in our society. Our landscape is changing, and so brands must adapt to that change in order to stay relevant to this most important consumer.
Below are links to two of our Female Datacards: Female Business Owners by State and Female Heads of Households by State.
http://ethnictechnologies.com/datacards/HHdatacard_236.html
http://ethnictechnologies.com/datacards/HHdatacard_204.html
Ethnic Technologies Female Insight
Women's History Month's roots go back to March 8, 1857, when women from New York City factories staged a protest over poor working conditions. In 1981 Congress established National Women's History Week to be commemorated the second week of March. In 1987, Congress expanded the week to a full month. In 2010 the estimated female population in the U.S. reached 156.4 million in comparison, the number of males was 152.1 million. An estimated 82.8 million of these women are mothers. There are roughly 9.2 million women-owned businesses in the U.S. Women-owned businesses contributed nearly $3.6 trillion to the U.S. economy over the past year. Approximately 8 percent of our nation's labor force works for a business owned by a woman. It is estimated that one third of new jobs by the year 2018 with be created by women-owned businesses. Ethnic Technologies can help your marketing efforts to this fast growing segment. The Ethnicenter Business Owner file has been enhanced with G-Tech 3.1, comprehensive gender identification software. The tables used in G-Tech 3.1 contain the correct female gender identification for over 164,330 first names including those from all the ethnicities covered by E-Tech 7.3.
Contact Candace M. Kennedy, Sales and Marketing Director at 866-333-8324 ext. 106 or candace@ethnictechnologies.com. Visit www.ethnictechnologies.com.
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