Rise of the Matriarchy: Why Older Women Will Take the Lead
Odds are you won’t be communicating with just any older consumer. You’ll be attempting to attract an older female consumer.
By now, you understand the economic power of people over the age of 50. That’s both now and into the future.
You further understand how the popular conception of retirement is being dismantled along with a multitude of misconceptions and ageist stereotypes. From there, you realize that despite the general aging of the population being the result of unstoppable demographic forces, marketing to older people has very little to do with demographic targeting.
Older adults represent a diverse population with an array of values, attitudes, lifestyles, and stages of life. All of these variables must be considered when crafting messages and creating products and services for older adults.
But wait… there’s one giant demographic caveat to that. For many marketing efforts in the longevity economy, you can slice the older population by slightly more than half right off the bat.
Odds are you won’t be communicating with just any older consumer. You’ll be attempting to attract an older female consumer.
The implications of a shift toward more power for older women are fairly profound. Let’s take a look at the three key ways influential older women will impact investing, spending, and entrepreneurship.
Women Will Control More Wealth
Historically, it’s been men who have generated, owned, and managed wealth. This is coming to an end, according to Wharton School professor Mauro F. Guillén.
That’s because women are gaining wealth faster than men, to the point that by 2030 women will own more than half the world’s total wealth. Guillén explores the ramifications of this shift in his book 2030: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything:
These momentous trends spell massive changes not just for society but also for capital markets, because women are different from men when it comes to investing; for companies, because women bring different perspectives to the workplace; and for innovation, because women are increasingly becoming entrepreneurs.
There are many logical reasons why this is happening. For example, Guillén shares that women receive the majority of undergraduate and graduate degrees in the United States, and more than 40 percent of women earn more than their husbands.
Then there’s the fact that women tend to live longer than men. When you think about the vast resources of the Baby Boomer generation, it stands to reason that married women will take control of much of that wealth, given that their husbands or partners will pass years before they do.
As we move forward, that increased life expectancy combined with the general greater emphasis that women place on preserving healthspan will lead to longer work lives. This will only accelerate the longevity flywheel of consumer spending by older women. To this point, Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab and author of The Longevity Economy: Inside the World's Fastest Growing, Most Misunderstood Market, believes that women buy into the “retirement dream” less than men typically do:
There are a few probable explanations for why women are leading the charge toward work in old age. One may be that they seem to internalize less indoctrination regarding the stage of life we’ve been taught to call “retirement.”
Whether or not a woman continues working for longer, she is still the primary prospect from a marketing standpoint. That’s because women make the bulk of consumer spending decisions regardless of other factors.
Women Make Most Spending Decisions
Across all age groups, women are responsible for 70-80 percent of all consumer purchasing, thanks to a combination of their buying power and influence. That adds up to $5 trillion to $15 trillion annually in collective purchasing power for women in the U.S. alone.
With older adults, women gain even more influence. As Coughlin puts it:
If anything, the real question is not which purchasing decisions older women make but which are left for their husbands — to the extent that their husbands are even alive.
Then there’s the unfair fact that when it comes to eldercare, it’s usually a woman doing the caretaking. When one spouse cares for the other in a heterosexual relationship, it’s usually the woman caring for the man. In the case of an adult child providing care to an older parent, that child is usually a daughter.
In both cases, a woman will be the one making all the purchasing decisions within the longevity economy. Marketers must take note and craft messaging accordingly.
Women also spend money differently than men. Guillén notes that women purchase education, healthcare, and insurance more readily, not just for themselves but for their children and grandchildren as well.
So is the fast increase in women’s wealth accumulation leading to a large transformation of the economy? Absolutely. Remember that spending on education, healthcare, and insurance account for about 30 percent of the American economy. As women accumulate more wealth over the next decade, those parts of the economy will benefit from increased spending.
Perhaps most importantly, according to Coughlin, we’ll look to older women consumers for key indicators when developing new products and services:
When consumers vote with their pocketbooks against the current narrative, it will be women who lead the way. Across age groups, they have a better idea than their male counterparts of which issues they will want solved in later life. They will be the first to recognize where existing solutions are inadequate or address the wrong questions. They will know the difference between products that attempt to solve the problem of older adults and those that solve problems for older adults.
As if women controlling the money and the ultimate call on how it’s spent wasn’t enough to convince you, there’s more. Women will also be starting businesses and creating innovative products and services.
Women Drive Change as Entrepreneurs
In his book, Professor Guillén projects that nearly half of all new business ventures will be launched by women. And based on what we know about entrepreneurship, most of those who succeed will be over 50.
It may well be that women grow impatient with largely young male product designers and take things into their own hands. Rather than simply providing indications of what new products and services are needed by older consumers, Generation X women will create those offers along with the businesses that promote them.
Despite the media narrative that entrepreneurship is a “young man’s” game, research shows otherwise. Generation X is already the most entrepreneurial cohort, and recent research shows we’re at the age when most successful businesses are started:
Generally speaking, the study showed that a 50-year-old entrepreneur was almost twice as likely to start an extremely successful company as a 30-year-old, and a 40-year-old entrepreneur was more than twice as likely to found a successful startup as a 25-five-year-old, and a 60-year-old founder was three times as likely to start a successful company as a 30-year-old.
The misconceptions and stereotypes associated with aging are major barriers to success for older entrepreneurs in the longevity economy. But as we know, those at middle age are the most receptive to the accurate counter-narrative of the new version of later life and will be able to see clearly what’s required when others can’t. Coughlin sums up what’s needed:
For anyone in the business of selling anything to the older, mostly female demographic, the challenge … is one of imagination: whether companies can grasp the true needs of their consumers as the consumers themselves experience them.
Barriers still need to fall, though. Despite the higher success rates, older entrepreneurs have a harder time raising capital. Now add to that the challenge women face with investors. Fortunately, there will be plentiful opportunities for bootstrapped and freelance businesses that will fill vital roles in the longevity economy.
The Power of Women is Not Evenly Distributed
Are we at the cusp of a shift away from the traditionally male-dominated world? Perhaps, but it won’t be quick or easy.
Despite all of the indications of a coming shift in economic power, nearly 1.5 billion of the world’s girls and women (that’s 40%) live in countries failing on gender equality. Add to that the diminution of women’s rights in the United States, and there’s clearly work to be done to remove inequality and unnecessary barriers.
Plus, Guillén cites a whole host of variables that determine how much economic strength and autonomy women have: whether they have kids, whether they are single or in a stable relationship, and whether they are married or divorced. In other words, not all women are in comparable starting positions as we head into the future.
Nonetheless, marketers cannot afford to discount older women in general, and specifically with longevity economy initiatives. Understanding that it's a her that you need to engage and persuade, though, is more than half the battle.
Brian, I'm loving this newsletter - and if you hear something that's me yelling "hell yes" over here to this post!
Yes.