Women Rules - Women Taking Over Job Market!

Yesterday, ABC announced the Diane Sawyer will be replacing Charles Gibson when he retired from the anchor chair of "ABC World News". It is a big news for Sawyer and women everywhere, because come January 2020, two of the "big three" US anchors will be women.
According to USA Today, women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time, a historic reversal caused by long-term changes in women's roles and massive job losses for men during this recession.
Women held 49.83% of the nation's 132 million jobs in June and they're gaining the vast majority of jobs in the few sectors of the economy that are growing, according to the most recent numbers available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That's a record high for a measure that's been growing steadily for decades and accelerating during the recession. At the current pace, women will become a majority of workers in October or November. The data for July will be released Friday.
The change reflects the growing importance of women as wage earners, but it doesn't show full equality, according to labor economist Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
On average, women work fewer hours than men, hold more part-time jobs and earn 77% of what men make, she says. Men also still dominate higher-paying executive ranks. Hopefully, this will change when more women are in the executive ranks like Sawyer.
As marketers, we should all pay more attention to the women's market, if it hasn't been on the top of your agenda already.

How Badly Has The U.S. Economy Battered Hispanic Families?

I am in total agreement with Dan Aversano, Senior Product Manager at The Nielsen Company.

There are 2 schools of though. Some said that Hispanics are less affected since this recession is largely the result of a credit crisis and substantial losses on Wall Street, and Hispanics were under-leveraged in terms of debt and, on average, had less money in equity securities.
Others believed Hispanic households have been particularly hard hit by shrinking housing starts and an ailing contracting service industry.

As Dan said, this is not a black and white situation and one has to look at various factors including unemployment rates, credit scores, GDP and confidence levels, etc.

We do know that unemployment rate of Hispanics (12.2%) hovers several percentage points above the national average (8.7%), yet lower than African American (14.7%) and did not decline in July along with that of other ethnic groups.

According to Nielsen's Homescan Hispanic Panel among both English- and Spanish-speaking Hispanics, when asked about their current financial conditions, more than half replied they were somewhat or much worse off than before—almost identical to the population as a whole.

Plus, surprisingly, unemployment did not seem to be a major source of concern. Despite steadily climbing rates through most of the first half of the year, not quite two-thirds of Hispanic respondents (63%) were very or somewhat secure about keeping their jobs. Though lower than the 72% of non-Hispanics who shared the same sentiment, it revealed an unexpected display of confidence.

Whether Hispanics are truly faring better or worse than the rest of the population, they are plainly concerned about their situations—just like everyone else. For example, 94% of Hispanic consumers and 93% of non-Hispanic consumers said they worry about the rising cost of food. Moreover, they are reluctant to make major purchases of cars, houses, appliances or vacations. Their homes have become the focus of many of their activities, which means eating out less often. Most important, they are going back to basics and becoming increasingly more discerning about what they need versus what they want.

Creatively Knows No Gender?????

I was reading an article in AdAge written by Karen Mallia "Creativity Knows No Gender, but Agency Creative Departments Sure Do". She mentioned about how Creative women have not enjoyed the level of success that women have found in every other advertising-agency department. The number of women in account management has doubled in the past two decades, resulting in equivalent numbers of men and women. More than half of planning and research employees are women. In media, women outnumber men 3-to-2. Yet, in creative, the ratio of men to women is 2.3-to-1.
What interesting are the readers' comments:
- Women (at least White women) still fare extraordinarily better than minorities. Is it really about gender or race - or is it really about the tactics of the ruling White male majority?
- The entire industry has been flamed for discriminatory practices since inception. The positions are mainly held by white males, PERIOD.
- An what's up with the questions they ask on a job application:are you a male, female, white, black, spanish... WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO SOMEONE'S CREATIVITY?
I personally have the experience working in a small company that is majority Asian American, a large international company that is majority white and one mid-size company that is majority Black, trust me, discrimination exist everywhere, in all ethnicity and all gender and age. How are we going to change this ... like John Lennon's famous song ... "Imagine".

Women’s Makeup, Hair Habits Unchanged by Economy

According to the new survey "Beauty Barometer" conducted by Loreal, nine in 10 of all respondetns report no change in their use of cosmetics because of the economy.
The “Beauty Barometer” survey polled 4,000 women in the US and four European countries about their cosmetic products and usage.
Additional findings from the survey:
- 40% of women have changed the makeup shades they purchase in an attemtp to be more "natural" during the current recession.
- Nearly half of US women believe wearing makeup gives them an advantage at work and makes them feel more in control.
- The majority of women surveyed (82%) believe wearing makeup makes them feel more self confident, and even more believe that wearing makeup improves their self image (86%).
- The research also found that the majority of women in the US are not compromising on hair care during the recession. Some 63% have not cut their hair to make it less expensive to maintain.
This is good news for a lot of marketers. There're still opportunities because women have products they won't forfeit during recession. You just need to make use of the consumer insights and find your way in!