The future of digital is female.

Lisa De Bonis
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

or ‘Can the web close the gender divide?’ as published in Campaign April 2011.

How women are increasingly the real drivers behind the numbers that matter.

The centre of gravity in the digital world has shifted. Cast your mind back and remember the time when the early commercial drivers of the web — like gaming, or porn — were, let’s face it, about as individualistic and boysie as it gets. Hours spent alone in a room with the curtains drawn. And that was just the gaming.

But not anymore. The explosion of social networking — and the integration of social features in just about every aspect of digital culture — has subtly shifted the commercial focus of the web.

Increasingly, it’s women that are driving the action. And we’re not just talking about readily-assembled communities like tweens on Stardoll or first time mums on Mumsnet. 70% of women have now purchased online, and the 35 to 49 year old female segment is easily the fastest growing in social media. Women have recently overtaken men on Twitter, Foursquare and YouTube usage. In gaming, 74% of casual games are now bought by women; and they’re now spending twice as much as men on virtual goods. And the major online growth areas? High Street shops, fashion, health, and well-being; all strongly female-led.

Increasingly, it’s the girls that are spending the cold hard (not ‘farm’) cash. Social commerce — shopping together online with your friends, as you might on a Saturday afternoon at the high street — is the next big commercial frontier in digital, and women are leading it. Early Facebook stores — Asos, Dove, Levi’s Curve — have a distinctly female focus. And it’s going to be big. Social commerce has gone from zero to $5bn in a blink; and in the next 5 years that figure will grow to $30 billion as travel, luxury and even car brands come to the party.

This gathering importance of women is already subtly reflected in tech trends. We’re entering ‘The Age of Calm Technology’, where digital investment is switching from flashier, tech-led and sometimes ephemeral innovation towards more emotionally intelligent design. Think of the ‘Like’ button, or Voucher Cloud app. A female consumer-friendly shift in emphasis, in other words, from features to benefits.

Good thing too, I say. But there’s an emerging disconnect in all of this.

Women may be driving the numbers, but industry and business have been predictably slow to decode that the way women think, behave and spend is in itself huge business.

Only 1% of women think tech manufacturers have them in mind when designing their products. In fact 71% of women still believe brands only really consider them for beauty & cleaning goods. And lest you think this is simply female paranoia, take a guess at what percentage of open-source developers are women? 1.5%. Which is staggering, when you think about it.

We might be consuming it, but we certainly aren’t building it. And the next generation look like following suit. Teenage girls may use the internet just as much as boys, but they’re five times less likely to consider a technology-related career.

So we better get moving. 88% of Wikipedia contributors are male, and we wouldn’t want history to be written by men again.

But I have a sneaking hunch that the future could be looking brighter; and here, as elsewhere, Google and Facebook are leading the way.

In Google’s recent Project Oxygen study, tasked to identify and define the key traits of good management, they concluded — contrary to expectations — that employees didn’t want their bosses to be more tech savvy than they were. The most important traits sought in a manager were actually eerily similar to the qualities traditionally believed to make a good parent; the ability to make their people feel appreciated, challenged and protected. Qualities, they respectfully concluded, that might arguably come more naturally to women.

And when I listen to the inspiring insights in the Ted Talk of Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, I’m tempted to believe the digital industry can break the mould and demonstrate — through its intrinsically democratic, empowering and collaborative nature — that it’s possible to break down traditional blocks to gender equality and empower a new generation of female leaders to be at the heart of the action.

Either way, I sincerely hope that in 20 years’ time I’m not still looking at a Campaign League Table telling me 90% of the CEOs, CDs and Planning Heads in this forward-thinking, creative and notably strategic industry of ours are male. That would be rather anti-social.

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