Go Get 'Em Girls: Utilizing the Power of the Female Consumer
Women control over $31.8T in worldwide spending. 85% of consumer spending decisions are made by women yet there are still some industries that have yet to take advantage of this phenomenon.
The girl power economy swept the world this past year. The extreme success of the box office hit Barbie, Beyonce’s Renaissance World Tour, and most notably Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour single handedly boosted consumer spending and GDP across the globe. Beyonce’s tour grossed $580 million as of October 2023, and the “Barbie” movie became the highest-grossing live-action film by a female director both domestically and globally. The Era’s Tour has brought in over $1B to date while the movie adaptation has made history by grossing more than $100 million in domestic revenue. The impact of Swift specifically was felt far beyond the cities in which she played shows, in fact, when Swift started dating Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs, games suddenly started seeing a massive increase in viewership. It spiked viewership 53% among teen girls, a 20% increase in sponsorship, and over $330M in added revenue for the Chief’s specifically.
Dubbed the “Taylor Swift Effect”, it seems everything she touches has turned to gold in the past 12 months. Swift has been seen as the leader of an unprecedented hype around the “girl economy,” i.e. the goods and services that target women. This power of the female consumer rocked the economy even garnering the attention of the Federal Reserve leading to acknowledgement of the macro-economic impact of these events in the Beige Book earlier in 2023. Academics are noticing with universities from Harvard to University of Texas offering courses on Swift. UC Berkeley now has an entrepreneurship class at its business school while University of Delaware an economics course based on her career. Beyond all the headlines and nomenclature, the wave of lucrative, female centered trends demonstrates the broader impact of catering to women.
But how do Barbie, Beyonce, and Taylor relate to startups and the venture capital ecosystem? Well, on the surface it may not be obvious, but ultimately, the girl power economy has been a main driver behind the success of a number of prominent CPG companies, e-commerce unicorns, social apps, and even healthcare companies.
For purposes of this post, I want to talk about the female economy’s impact on health specifically. Put simply, women are the largest consumers of healthcare and are the most underserved in the market, leaving a huge amount of whitespace for innovation and disruption. Not only are women spending more money on consumer health products and services, but they are the primary decision makers when it comes to traditional healthcare for their families, making 90% of household healthcare decisions. Women account for 80% of healthcare spending, 93% of food spending, and 93% of OTC pharmaceuticals. On average, women spend $124 on health and wellness a month compared to $94 for men, while millennials spent $20 more monthly on beauty, fitness, and wellness than members of Gen Z, amounting to a $240 annual difference.
With all these data points, women seem to be the obvious targets for companies in the healthcare but more often than not have been neglected, most significantly within traditional healthcare. The biggest contributing factor to this being a lack of data on women’s health. For a long time, women were excluded from research and clinical trials, leading to overmedication issues, lack of women specific treatments, and misdiagnoses. There are a number of common chronic conditions in the women’s health space, such as endometriosis and PCOS, that have virtually no treatments because there is no research on the diseases. There are a number of companies, such as Evvy and Cercle, that are trying to fill this data gap, but we are still decades behind where we should be.
All this to say that not only do we need more founders in health actively targeting the female population but it is an industry ripe for disruption with an enormous of untapped consumer appetite. There are still so many unknowns about women’s health and the only way to make strides will be for founders, funders, researcher, and policy makers to funnel resources towards the space. In order to see the clinical outcomes as well as financial exits in the space, we need to take a chance on the market. You have to start somewhere, right?
Clearly, it’s obvious given half the world’s population are women and women are more likely to spend on their health, that it’s a huge opportunity, that women’s health is an enormous space with multitudes of verticals and an abundance of value. More than identifying trends, funding groundbreaking studies, and finding companies to support, we must educate and inform, to open the eyes of key stakeholders and the broader community to one of the largest untapped spaces within the innovation and investment ecosystem.
When we think about women’s health we must understand the broader impact it has on society. Women’s healthcare is intertwined in the health of economies around the world. When we empower women, we empower the rest of the population because at the end of the day, each and every one of us was brought into this world by a woman and most were raised by a woman. Without women, there would be no future generations of innovative entrepreneurs or investors aiming to find new technologies that can change the world. Without women, we do not exist. It is critical that we ensure women are seen and heard and have access to the care necessary to live long, prosperous, happy lives.
As we look to the future, the broad influence of the female consumer will only continue to grow, not only within health but across industries. With advancements in technology, changing societal norms, and shifting consumer preferences, businesses must adapt and evolve to meet the needs of this dynamic demographic. By championing females and adhering to their unique wants and needs, companies can not only tap into the purchasing power of women but also drive positive social change and create a more equitable and prosperous future for all.
And to conclude, happy (one day belated) International Women’s Day to all the badass women out there!