Women have incredible purchasing power, but are you selling to them? Does your advertising reflect their financial realities? Women are not only part of the decision-making unit; they are the decision-making unit. When brands fail to treat women as the financial decision-makers they are — they’re going to miss the mark.  

According to Nielsen, by 2028, women across the globe will own 75% of discretionary spending. Of the 600 women who participated in our research, 28% generate 100% of their household income. Our research shows that while women differ in how they want brands to engage them, all three attitudinal segments we identified (Brand Approvers, Boundary Pushers, and Female Favorers) make significant financial contributions at home. 

Frankly, the future of your brand depends on how well you capture women’s attention with your products and services. Everyday women are highly influential in their families and friendships (and on social media, too). If you don’t aim for inclusion, you miss out on one of the most powerful sources of influence out there. It’s time to meet women where they are financially.  

What women are buying 

Our research looks into attitudes, purchasing habits, and preferences around products and services that have been and continue to be taboo for women. These are the products and services brands have treated with innuendo, implicit communication, and covert, indirect marketing. Sex toys. Incontinence products. Cannabis. Not to mention products and services that have left women out in the cold entirely, like finances.   

Make no mistake; she’s buying. 

Here’s how women spent their money in 2022: 

• 69% bought alcoholic beverages

• 39% bought sex and sexual health products

• 30% bought financial planning or retirement services

• 30% bought mental health services

• 28% bought cannabis products

• 23% bought products to help with aging

Whether brands want to update their approach or not, women’s needs are not going away. But you can bet Boundary Pushers and Female Favorers (62% of respondents overall) will give their money to brands that get them over ones that don’t. Brands are at a crossroads: 

1. Maintain the status quo with the tired advertising of decades past. 

   -or-

2. Change the conversation and capture women's attention. They’re ready to be seen and heard. 

We recommend option two. Since women accounted for $31.9 trillion in consumer spending in 2019 alone, that’s a massive slice of the pie for brands to plate up. 

Advertising needs an upgrade. 

One in two women says they sometimes make purchases influenced by marketing, advertising, or packaging designed to attract women's attention. One in four make these purchases often. 

Just as women influence their household financial decisions, effective advertising can influence what women buy. 

But too many stereotypes about women and finances still have a hold on advertising and sales, and it’s a barrier to reaching women. 

Even as recently as 2016, 85% of women felt the advertising world needed to catch up with their reality. But has it? As the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found in their study of gender bias from 2006-2016, “Ads with only male voices were much more common than ads with only female voices, accounting for 18% and 3% of ads, respectively. Men speak about seven times more than women.” It’s time advertisers spoke directly to the women signing the checks. 

In a New York Times interview with Jane Cunningham, one of the authors of Brandsplaining: Why Marketing is (Still) Sexist And How to Fix It, Cunningham notes that about 71% of creative directors are men. So if one gender has creative control over advertising, who is ensuring women’s lives are reflected in the ads they see? 

Women need to be both creators and audiences for advertisements to connect. 

Meet women financially, or lose money. 

It’s not enough for brands to target women with products and services thought of as just for women. If you want to capture the spending power of women, you need to meet them where they are because women buy on their households' behalf, not just for themselves. 

Women are already buying in many categories where they haven’t historically been the advertising targets (tires or power tools, for example). But large successful brands have yet to welcome them into the brand story and make them the heroes (or heroines, depending on what you prefer). 

We need a revolutionary approach that actually understands where women are and what they spend their money on. 

Women make decisions at home as keepers of the family’s finances and are significant contributors to HHI. Brands that fail to see that are failing to set themselves up for success. Women need to be addressed directly in advertising because it will often be her call what her family buys.  

Check out our executive summary for more information about women’s purchasing habits and the segments we found.