MARKETING TO WOMEN

One of the first questions that always pops up is why there is a specific need for female marketing. Some women feel offended and do not wish to be addressed in a different way than men while most men don’t understand anything about the whole fuss at all.

To me, the differences between men and women are so obvious that I used to skip this part of the discussion. Well, that was a mistake as lots of people disagreed with me. It seems very difficult to discuss differences between the sexes without being accused of using outdated gender stereotypes and bolster sexist thinking.

And so I’ll start of this blog with a decent amount of gender research into the differences between the sexes. The book ‘The female brain’ from Louann Brizendine provides lots of useful information on this subject. She is a professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of California and she argues that differences in the female brain structure and the resulting differences in hormones explain a lot about different behavior between men and women.


Brizendine starts off with an explanation of genetic differences between men and women. Although more than 90% of genetic materials are identical, the 1% differences between male and female accounts for lots of differences.
A male brain is up to 9% bigger than a female one, even when measured against body size. Yes, there’s a nice topic for jokes… and indeed this used to lead scientists to the assumption that women were actually small versions of men in all aspects, expect for reproduction obviously.
Brizendine goes on to argue that hormones are responsible for typcial male or female behavior. ie the influence of Oestrogen makes women more interested in emotions and communication with other people. She described the lifetime hormone cycle for women with typical phases such as puberty, pregnancy and lactation where hormones play a big role in women’s lives.
I personally really liked the part where she explains the differences between baby girls and baby boys. I have a daughter and a son myself and I instantly recognized everything that Brizendine mentions about this, ie the observation that their neurological structure lets girls establish lots of eye contact with their parents, whereas boys tend to look away. My son Teun was happily watching everything that moved, except for my face, which was quite different with my daughter Jip.
Furthermore, Brizendine states that girls can detect more tones and frequencies in voices than boys and are therefore more inclined to listen to their parents or to let the parents soothe them.
Another thing a recognized all to well: girls seem to use about 3 times as many words than boys and learn to speak much earlier than boys.
Puberty raises hormone levels and sharpens the differences between the sexes. Brizendine states that women react differently to stress and aggression and are more inclined to avoid conflicts and get depressed twice as much as boys of their age. Interesting: Acne indicates a high level of one of the aggression hormones Androgen, also responsible for sexual desire. Taking the pill apparently suppresses the levels of this hormone and thus makes teen girls less aggressive and less eager to have sex.

Some other interesting results from research: women across all cultures seem to attach less importance to looks and find material well being and status more important. Yup, that’s were the cliche couple in Saint Tropez comes from: rich old man dating young model… Well, apparantly this even plays a role when women are financially self sufficient. Besides that, women look for men of at least 10 cm taller and 3,5 years older than they are. Brizendine relates this to age old instincts.