Recently, my life has been ruled by a tyrannical little man. He’s relentless in telling me whenever I fall short; I’ve come to dread the sight of him.
I ought to explain. The little man doesn’t really exist; he lives inside my new GPS training watch, where he races against another little man, who is meant to represent me.
Every time I look, he informs me just how sluggish I am, with his infuriating refrain of: “You are 30 minutes behind.” Guess what? I know. I’m a woman. I’m supposed to run a home, be on top of my job and look halfway decent – I’m at least 30 minutes behind for everything and that’s on a good day.
Maybe some men like the element of competition and goading, but if that watch had been designed by a woman for a female runner, the little man would be toast. Instead, there would be a chic little woman saying: “Well done! You have used up 534 calories. Now you can eat a cake.”
Not all men are this bad at understanding women; some are past masters at female psychology. Stuart Rose at Marks & Spencer has a keen instinct for his target market, as does Philip Green at Topshop. Asda boss Andy Bond knows exactly how to appeal to mums on a budget. But beyond traditional areas such as fashion and food, there are still sectors where little if any thought seems to be given to female purchasers.
The running business is a case in point. Although I see at least as many women as men on my circuits of London’s Clapham Common, most of the kit is male-oriented. A lot of female gear is just a scaled-down version of a bloke’s; you have to pay a fortune for a garment that is flattering, functional and doesn’t come in a noxious shade of yellow. Energy drinks and gels have macho names such as Hammer, Maxim and Torque. Why? We’re not in the SAS, we’re only going for a jog.
Sometimes, woman-blindness crosses the line from the irritating to the damaging. Take pensions. Personal plans are routinely designed and sold on the unspoken assumption that the investor is male; this myopia is a major reason why many women will end up with inadequate incomes when they retire. The marketing does not address a key barrier for women – the fact that many mothers perceive saving for their retirement to be selfish.
A report by Scottish Widows this year found that women place a low priority on their own financial security and feel obliged to put spending on their children’s needs first. The marketing might be more persuasive if it stressed the point that a pension means mothers are less likely to be a burden on their kids in later life.
Seeing the world through female eyes can be good for business. Take handbags. If a woman has her bag stolen from her car, her loss is likely to amount to several hundred pounds, but many standard car policies wouldn’t cover the full amount. There are now plans aimed at women drivers with special handbag cover written in.
Even the notoriously laddish brewing industry – remember Tennent’s Lager Lovelies? – has woken up to the potential of the female consumer. Coors, for instance, set up an initiative called Project Eve to find out how to appeal to female drinkers.
Male cluelessness can be funny and endearing, but I can’t help seeing that horrid homunculus in my watch as a mascot for mindless man-think. Smart men, and smart companies, make it their business to find out what makes women tick.
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