Facts about the "Purse Power" of women

Yeah it is spending by women and that aspect of the wage gap again. It sounds a bit ridiculous if you complain that one group is discriminated when it comes to wages, yet almost every dollar runs through that groups hands.

Facts about the "Purse Power" of women:

Women are the dominant spending force in almost every retail/business category and are the most affluent and influential consumers of today.

• Of all consumer purchases, women are responsible for 83%
  
• Homes: Directly purchase or influence the purchase of 91% of all new homes
  
• Home fix-up purchases: More than 55%
  
• Retail: Account for 88% of customers in the US & Canada
  
• Auto: Make more than 50% of all auto purchases and influence 85%.
  
• Home furnishings: 94%
  
• Vacation choices: 92%
  
• House purchases: 91%
  
• Consumer electronics purchases: 51% (women are involved in 89% of all consumer electronic purchase decisions)
  
• Home Computers: Account for 66% of all purchases
  
• Bank Accounts: Hold 89% of all accounts
  
• Credit Cards: Women carry 76 million credit cards, 8 million more then men—(Fast Company, 2004)
  
• Healthcare: Make 80% of Healthcare decisions and account for 67% of spending
  
• Health: Purchase 65% of herbal remedies, vitamins and minerals and purchase 80% of all healthcare
  
• Beauty and hygiene: Purchase more than 90%
  
• Clothes, accessories: Wear more than 90% of items such as jewelry and perfume
  
• Meetings: Plan the meetings and comprise the majority of certified meeting planners
  
• Office Supplies: Purchase $44.5 billion
  
• Lawn movers: Purchase approximately 81% of riding lawn mowers
  

All facts noted above are from the 2005 Wow! Quick Facts book and the U.S. Census Bureau, 2004 - from here

And more and more....

American women spend about $5 trillion annually…Over half the U.S. GDP

Consulting firm A.T. Kearney estimates that women determine 80% of consumption, purchase 60% of all cars and own 40% of all stocks 

70% of new businesses are started by women

Women represent the majority of the online market - from here

and more and more....

Tons of facts and figures related to female marketing were presented the Marketing to women conference in Chicago.

Here’s a small selection:
- In the US, women control $7 trillion in consumer and business spending (from The power of the purse
- 30,7% of women outearn their husbands (Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US census)
- women owned businesses now employ more people in the US than the Fortune 500 companies combined
- women purchase 90% of beauty products, 94% of apparel, 89% of home products, 81% of gifts and 51% of consumer electronics
- in the US, women earn more bachelors degrees than men
- from here

and more and more (yeah I am being creative here, well what do you expect it is just a collection of numbers)...

• Women dominate the marketplace as consumers of goods and services, including housing, electronics, automobiles, travel and healthcare. Women make over 85% of consumer purchases and influence 95% of all purchases of goods and services.
• Women-owned and controlled businesses constitute a growing segment of the economy. Women own over 46% of privately held companies in the U.S. In 2004, women-owned businesses employed more than 19 million people and generated $2.46 trillion in sales.
• Women control substantial assets and investments. Women constitute 47% of all investors. They comprise 41% of those reporting incomes of $500,000 or more, and they control $14 trillion of assets. In addition to handling 75% of all household finances, women make more than 53% of all investment decisions.
• Women will make up nearly half of the U.S. labor force. Women constitute 52% of the adult U.S. population. In 2005, women comprised 46.4% of all full-time wage and salaried workers. In 2003, they earned nearly 60% of all bachelor's and master's degrees and more than 47% of all doctorates. 

- from here

Remember we are talking about an oppressed group here...

Women’s roles in society, the economy, and at home have evolved to where an increasing amount of decision-making and control falls to women. Unlike women in previous generations, today’s woman finds herself in an unprecedented societal and economic shift:

• The percentage of women in the workforce almost doubled in the second half of the last century, from 32% to 62%.
• Today there are one-third more women graduating from college than men.
• Women’s median income has increased over 60% over the past thirty years, while men’s median income has hardly increased at all.
• The number of women earning $100,000+ has quadrupled in last decade.
• Sixty percent of women with business degrees out-earn their husbands.
• Women account for half of all stock market investors.
• It is expected that by 2010, women will control 60% of wealth in the United States. 

- from the new Allianz Women, Money, and Power Study.  2006

And finally

1. Women accounted for 51 percent of all workers in the high-paying management, professional, and related occupations. They outnumbered men in such occupations as public relations managers; financial managers; human resource managers (Feck: Glass ceiling? Who is hiring? Women I guess); education administrators; medical and health services managers; accountants and auditors; budget analysts; biological scientists; preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers; physical therapists; writers and authors; and registered nurses.
2. Of persons aged 25 years and older, 29 percent of women and 30 percent of men had attained a bachelor’s degree or higher; 31 percent of women and men had completed only high school, no college. 

- from here

That was a bit. Probably the group with the most spending power on this planet is american women.
 ---------------------------------
EDIT: Found something more, but too less for another spending post.

Statistics overwhelm and convince us that women are the market and the economy
as demonstrated not only by the Business Women’s Network but Marty Barletta in her new book on marketing to women.

[...]

Services are the same story…

* New bank accounts (89%)
* Healthcare (80% of decisions, over two-thirds of all health care spending)

When you add the purchasing officers who are women, it is an American Woman’s Economy that accounts for over half of the U.S. GDP…about $55 trillion.” Translation: Earth’s largest economy…American Women. (Barletta, M., 2003) - from here

And the last one...

Senior women age 50 and older control net worth of $19 trillion and own more than three-fourths of the nation’s financial wealth. – MassMutual Financial Group–2007

Of the 743 women of wealth interviewed with at least $3 million in investable assets, 61.2% accumulated their fortunes through corporate employment, their own or a family business or a professional practice. Only 38.8% of the women had married into or inherited their money. – Women of Wealth, 2004, by Russ Alan Prince and Hannah Shaw Grove

High-net-worth women account for 39% of the country’s top wealth earners; 2.5 million of them have combined assets of $4.2 trillion. More than 1.3 million women professionals and executives earn in excess of $100,000 annually. 43% of Americans with more than $500,000 in assets are female – MassMutual Financial Group–2007

Over the next decade, women will control two thirds of consumer wealth in the United States and be the beneficiaries of the largest transference of wealth in our country’s history. Estimates range from $12 to $40 trillion. Many Boomer women will experience a double inheritance windfall, from both parents and husband. The Boomer woman is a consumer that luxury brands want to resonate with. – Claire Behar, Senior Partner and Director, New Business Development, Fleishman-Hillard New York

Once the college bills are out of the way and children launch their own households, the discretionary spending power of 50-plus women soars. They spend 2.5 times what the average person spends. Women are the primary buyers for computers, cars, banking, financial services and a lot of other big-ticket categories. – Marti Barletta, Primetime Women

The number of wealthy women investors in the U.S. is growing at a faster rate than that of men. In a two-year period, the number of wealthy women in the U.S. grew 68%, while the number of men grew only 36%. – The Spectrem Group - from here

Okay one more to go...you should read that one because of the rest, too

Each year, on balance, men hand trillions of dollars they’ve earned over to women to spend. Some of these vast transfers are through the tax system, and some through inheritance by widows. (She-conomy.com claims, for whatever it’s worth, “Senior women age 50 and older control net worth of $19 trillion and own more than three-fourths of the nation’s financial wealth.”) Nonetheless, most male-to-female handovers are from husbands who are specialists at making money in a particular career to their more generalist wives, who take on for the family the bulk of the onerous task of trying to spend it wisely.

Still, women tend not only to be more interested shoppers, but also more enthusiastic shoppers. For example, a 1995 survey found that women are more likely than men to admit that they shop to celebrate, buy without need, buy unplanned items, and can’t resist a sale. - from here