1. Is Gender A Women’s Issue In Your Business?

Gender is typically associated with a moral imperative for the benefit of a more equal and fair society. In business, gender maintains this definition but is often forgotten as a commercial differentiator. Our understanding of gender internally affects our attitudes and representations of both men and women as external consumers, and in turn impacts our workplace cultures, business lenses and external messages.

Improving and better understanding gender is beneficial not only for employees, and the bottom-line but in better communicating with all kinds of customers. While it’s not the only commercial differentiator to focus on, it’s a good one to start with as it’s often the first attribute we identify.

2. Does Your Business Segment Your Audiences By Gender?

The two most common answers are, “Of course we do!” and “Isn’t that discriminatory?” It might seem obvious to gender segment first especially when conducting research into your target markets. Yet old business practices around research are often reinforcing gender stereotypes instead of breaking or expanding upon antiquated notions of modern men and women. Is it time to question whether you’re asking the right questions?

In the wake of the Equal Opportunity Act, many businesses began to associate discrimination with seeing certain competitive differences. It is actually the opposite – being more sensitive to each gender through a concerted effort to understand them means you’re able to personalise and connect your business offering to better suit their needs. Recognising gender differences will also help you uncover unmet or overlooked customers you may have not considered before.

3. Does Gender And Sexuality Get Mixed Up In Diversity And Inclusion Discussions?

Non-binary. Fluidity. Queer. There’s a lot of new vernacular floating around modern society that is starting to leak into the business world. And it’s important we respect these new identifiers. However, gender, in the business context is related to sexuality but not defined by it.

While sexual preference and other identity signifiers inform segment characteristics in business, male and female are still the biological anchors of the gender spectrum. Bringing in other identifiers requires a base understanding and acknowledgment of gender.

4. “We Can’T Do Gender-Split Campaigns – We Don’t Have the People or the Budget for That!” Sound Familiar?

Sure, it does look like a gender split campaign would mean more work and more budget but it’s not. Consider this: what if you fiscally proportioned your budget according to gender? That means identifying the weighted $ value of your male and female segments and apportion accordingly – effort, time, budget.

The most common mistake brands make with women is treating them like an ‘emerging market’ by giving them only a small budget and high expectations. For example, Nike identified the female market as a strong growth category and yet internal investigations revealed that budgets and teams were kept small and limited. In the end, that hindered them from pursuing and capturing the same kind of growth with the women’s segment that their competitor Adidas was achieving by taking the market seriously.

5. Do You Have a 50:50 Gender Split Work Force or An All-Female Team Dedicated to Specific Projects?

That’s great! Congrats. You’re well-ahead of your peers. Equal employment ratios are important and extremely beneficial to a business and its bottom-line.

Yet this doesn’t mean your business gets gender commercially. Often a business will point to these ratios to prove they get gender but they’re usually missing the bigger opportunity of maximising it as a commercial differentiator.

Secondly, the occupation of an XY chromosome doesn’t mean that you are bestowed with a PHD in all of the nuances and complexities of gender.

The predominant ‘male-lens’ in business means that many women use male lenses when dealing with gender. They may be as blind as anyone else when viewing a campaign or desensitised to the smaller issues within a piece such as the use of a dumb male narrator or the lack of intelligent female characters This means that having an all-female team does not necessarily make them experts on engaging non-homogenous female clients or customers. Getting gender intelligent is a skill that needs a deeper understanding and engagement of where and what has brought modern women and men to where they are today.