As women gain economic power, so does their economic influence. Women have long been responsible for purchasing everyday household items, but today they control or influence 85 percent of consumer spending.
I founded Cake Ventures As a venture capital firm, invests in technology companies addressing our world’s rapidly changing demographics.
My thesis consists of three levels of demographic change: aging and longevity; the transition to a “majority-minority,” where the Internet is driven by a group of technology adopters from Asian, Black, and Latino backgrounds; and changes in women’s income and spending power. improve.
Many investors evaluate opportunities to invest specifically in women through the lens of female founders (we can’t talk about opportunities for female consumers without acknowledging the dismal investment numbers for female founders), but there are similar opportunities in the women’s economy — Invest in technology that solves problems and meets the needs of female consumers.
Women should no longer be considered a niche market. In fact, they’re one of the most significant growth markets we’ve seen.
This group has driven companies to billion-dollar outcomes in women’s health, e-commerce, the care economy, and other areas.Decagon Valuation fortunate and a billion dollar (or more) valuation Expert Health, circusand unbelievably healthy These are just a few examples of the staying power of the female dollar.
How are women a growth market?
Today, women make up roughly half of the U.S. workforce and, adjusted for self-employment, form the new workforce. This growth was largely driven by growth in the retail and healthcare industries, which employ more women and are heavily influenced by women’s spending power.
The rise in female employment is also inextricably linked to education: As of 2019, nearly half of the working female population aged 25-64 had a bachelor’s degree or higher—the highest rate since 1970 The number of women has quadrupled.
Today, women make up 59.5 percent of college students, and even as enrollment at U.S. colleges is declining, men account for 71 percent of the decline. If this trend continues, soon there will be two women earning the same college degree as one man.
These factors have led to a dramatic increase in women’s economic power, even with persistent wage gaps. Driven by steady increases in labor force participation, education, and wage growth, women in the United States control more than $10 trillion in assets (a figure that is expected to triple over the next decade).
Women are increasingly likely to be the primary breadwinners, economic contributors and heads of households, making 85 percent of daily spending decisions and 80 percent of healthcare spending decisions for households.
Four major investment themes
The pace of women’s economic activity increased across categories. This will not only affect consumer categories such as beauty, apparel and home goods, but also who is the primary buyer of housing, users of financial products such as credit cards and mortgages, and decision makers in the workplace.
Women’s demand drove accelerated growth in dollars spent by them across four main categories:
“Super Consumer”
Women have long been the target customers of retail and e-commerce, but the modern female consumer — the “superconsumer” — has more sway over the economy than ever before. Many private unicorns and multibillion-dollar public companies can attribute their growth to a strong and engaged female consumer base.
Many would lump billion-dollar beauty and fashion brands like Skims, SHEIN, and Savage x Fenty into the category of women-consumer-driven companies. Dig deeper and you’ll find female consumer dollars driving the acceleration of new consumer brands and related activity around creators and influencers, e-commerce enablement and supply chain.
The impact of Women’s Dollar can be felt in consumer-facing categories like education, healthcare, food and financial technology. When considering female consumers, it is more appropriate to ask, ‘Which industries aren’t affected by Women’s Dollars? ‘
Women’s Health and Wellness
Women are the largest consumers of healthcare based on their own health needs and their role as primary healthcare decision makers for their families. “Femtech” is now a widely recognized category of healthcare innovation, with $16 billion in investment as of Q3 2022, and is expected to become a nearly $1.2 trillion industry by 2027. Tia Health and kind person Transforming the healthcare user experience for women and others Life and gamete Science is merging with AI and data to modernize IVF, ovarian disease and menopause.
These opportunities extend to maternal health care, mental health, and home diagnostics—all areas that will accelerate innovation in the coming years. In a post-Roe world and a world where women want more control over their healthcare, women’s health promises to be one of the most active areas of innovation.
care economy
As women take on more professional responsibilities outside the home, their care responsibilities have not diminished. Disregarding caregiving as a “women’s job” has resulted in the category being neglected and underinvested, even as the number of male caregivers continues to rise and the influx of aging parents will become the new caregivers for many of us The same is true for the next.
Nursing became a political topic during the 2020 election, with the Biden administration proposing a 2024 budget that proposed $750 billion in federal support for nursing. In addition to this focus of the federal government, there are substantial market opportunities for technologies that could make this care more accessible and affordable.
company like Mirza is helping employers provide working parents with carer subsidies to reduce childcare-related absences. There is great opportunity to build solutions that reduce the financial burden of care, support professional and home caregivers, and make care more accessible and affordable for everyone. As women become our most educated workforce, we have to figure out how to get care and work done.
women at work
During the pandemic, women in their careers have embraced the tools of hybrid and remote work that have reshaped the modern workplace ever since. It’s these working women who have been driving demand for emerging technologies and platforms that are fundamentally changing the return to work. The future of non-white-collar work is particularly relevant to women in categories such as education, service work, health care and skilled nursing.labor market as transforming medicine and Vivian Health Emerging to fill healthcare job shortages focuses on different aspects of the skilled clinician job market. As technologies such as AI force white-collar jobs to evolve, non-white-collar jobs with a concentration of women will find AI an accelerant for training and remove some of the more tedious tasks and reporting requirements in those jobs.
Looking Ahead: Investing in Women
Today, women are more educated than ever before, more active in the workforce, and more likely to start companies. Still, there is a lot of room for improvement in harnessing their economic might. This gap is an alpha opportunity for investors. Investing in women-led companies and areas of business where women’s needs are unmet has the potential to unlock billions of dollars.
Women should no longer be considered a niche market. In fact, they’re one of the most significant growth markets we’ve seen.
this white paper Contains more research on demographic change by Cake Ventures.
