International Women’s Day (IWD) is a great time to highlight that women are absolutely dominant players in the US (and global) economy. While this has had, and is having, a transformational effect on everything from the auto industry to American politics, its history is just as incredible.
That history starts on February 28, 1909, when the precursor to our modern variant was held in New York. The international character of the women’s suffrage movement at the time meant this first observance inspired women across the world and in Europe especially. Eventually, on March 8, 1917, another of these increasingly common women’s marches happened in St. Petersburg, Russia. It joined with other, ongoing strikes and supercharged them – the Russian women recruited around 50,000 more workers from nearby factories, swelling the strikers’ numbers to a quarter of a million within 2 days, all protesting food shortages, autocracy, and war. This kicked off what we know as the February Revolution (March 8th was February 23 in the old Russian calendar) and brought down the Russian Empire.
IWD returned to America in force around 1967, when it was adopted by the feminist movement, and gained further traction in the West when the UN recognized it in 1975. In the West specifically, women really began to see their societal power grow as the same feminist movement drew ever more of them into the workplace. While this normalized financial autonomy, it didn’t immediately erode traditional gender roles. Day jobs were now just followed by, “second shift[s],” as Arlie Hochschild famously termed housework.
By the 80s though, these changes began to make waves in the economy. Unexpectedly, the same traditional gender roles that had resisted change now drove its biggest effect: women’s power as consumers. Their normalized role as shoppers and caretakers (the lead buyers within their social networks) started to give them consumer power far greater than the demographic numbers indicated. Cut to the modern day and estimates name women as drivers of 70-80% of all consumer purchases in the US, through a combination of indirect influence and direct buying power.
That colossal economic power has grabbed the attention of market researchers and the brands they work with, slowly shifting implicit influence toward market-shaping influence. Businesses, in other words, are beginning to recognize the value in meeting women’s needs as consumers beyond just dyeing everything pink.
Furthermore, in our post-Citizens United world, money (and therefore consumer power) is directly convertible into political power. Which makes women the most powerful political interest group.
That dominant economic influence has already reshaped markets. Take conscious consumption: It’s when you think about the effects of a purchase before you make it. The Green Revolution is arguably the biggest trend that’s emerged from this practice. The shift in consumer demand that it describes, from cost to sustainability, was of course led by women, 75% of whom identified as the primary shoppers in their household in 2011.
From Whole Foods to electric cars to carbon-neutral shipping options, this one subtype of conscious consumption has already remade much of our economy. The change can be seen clearly in the sales of sustainable products, which grew 20% from 2014-18 alone. After asking so often about the production practices and sourcing of products, it’s only natural to ask about their political effects.