Two weeks ago on May 8, I gave a speech on the global power of the purse at the Marketing to Women conference in Chicago. From what I could tell from questions from the audience, discussions afterward and the applause (thank you), it was a success. But what continues to surprise me are the frank discussions I have with women who listened to my speech and then said: I never thought of women and economics that way.

What way? I often ask. The way, they say, in which education, money, and economic independence have made us what we are today. Too often as American women, we take for granted all those foundational elements--education, the right to vote, access to capital, the right to own a business--which have made us powerful consumers, powerful voting blocks, and powerful in the country's economy. It isn't until they listen to what is happening to women in other countries that they begin to see the power of what we have in American society today--and that power isn't just about what we can buy. Indeed it is far more about what we can produce from the education that we receive.

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This week I'll be presenting at the Marketing to Women conference in Chicago and listening intently to my fellow presenters about the new tactics and strategies to reach women consumers. I'll be blogging from the conference on Thursday, May 8.

For this blog, I'll be taking yet another look at a country where women are increasingly important to their country's economy. India--soon to be the world's largest country--has boomed along with its Asian neighbor, China. And like China, its women have become a force as consumers and producers.

Technopak/The Knowledge Company, a management consulting firm, took a look at India"s most affluent consumers--a group of 280 million mostly urban-based consumers--to see what India's burgeoning middle-class consumers were buying. The company broke women consumers into three intriguing categories that show how important it is to understand women both in a global and a local context. Here is a link to the complete research article:

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:u2JK9K4i8HkJ:www.ksa-technopak.com/pdf/DTC%2520Presentation%2520-%25201%2520August%25202006.pdf+india+women+and+consumers&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=79&gl=us

The "butterflies" make up 50 percent of the women in the urban affluent class. As the nickname implies these women are all about the looks. They are moving rapidly to luxury goods, especially high-tech products like cellphones and MP3 players. But the second largest group--"old luxury"--make up 32 percent and are not as much about the "bling." These women have grown up with luxury, as the report notes, and may tend toward more traditional luxury goods.

Notably, the third group is called "Mrs. Rationality," a nickname that reflects a more logical, less indulgent buying group. It would be easy to assume that affluent urban women would act and buy alike. But the differences in these three groups show how fast-paced change can shape and mold consumers in unusual ways.

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Recent events--the Senate filibuster of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the first-ever women's business conference in Saudi Arabia--has me pondering how far we have come and far we still have to go in recognizing the power of women on a global scale.

I won't debate the pros or cons of the Ledbetter act here. But the proposed act, which would extend the period of time a person has to sue for pay discrimination, reminded me once again of the gap between the salaries of men and women. The gap--a woman makes 77 cents for every $1 a man makes in the U.S.--remains a critical issue and not only for female employees and the companies for which they work.

It's also a critical issue for the American economy, which depends so heavily on consumers.

Consider if women, the most world's important consumers, had that extra money in their purses? How would they spend it? It might go toward a down payment on a house. It might help buy a new car or help kick start a remodeling project on a home. It is quite possible that women would save or invest those extra funds. Women tend to invest less in retirement accounts than men. Is that because they have less cushion every two weeks when their paychecks arrive?

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During my travels in China in the past decade, it has been heartening to see the advancement of women in the country. Access to education and business opportunities are beginning to give Chinese women their rightful place in the country's economic expansion.

Consider a few facts from a report by Ernst & Young in 2007. According to a study from Mastercard cited in the report, young, unmarried women or married women with no children will control $260 billion in purchasing power by 2015. That is up from just $180 billion in 2005. Even elderly women who live alone will have a surprising amount of spending power--$115 billion by 2015--more than double the amount in 2005.

While 74 percent of women earn less than their husbands, an estimated 78 percent of them have control over the family's money. Married women make the decisions on what the family eats and what the family wears in Chinese households.

Even when it comes to big purchases such as cars or luxury items, a significant minority of Chinese women--23 percent--indicated that they could make those purchases on their own. This is a shift from conventional wisdom as Ernst & Young's report succinctly points out: "...general assumptions were that men being the sole or main breadwinner would also therefore act as the main decision maker when it comes to financial planning on spending."

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I have been blogging lately at eBrandmarketing.com. Join me there on a regular basis for more on women, marketing and the global power of the purse. http://www.ebrandmarketing.com

Some of the eBrandmarketing.com blogs will appear in this forum over the next few months, but I am working toward creating two separate blogs...but with the same end goal in mind.

I want to start a conversation about the global power of the purse. What issues are you facing as marketers in the global market? Do you recognize women as an important part of your marketing mix when you head overseas? Do you have success stories of reaching women around the world? What obstacles have you found? What would you like to know more about in terms of research and case studies?

As we head into the Marketing to Women Conference May 8-9, 2008 in Chicago, I would like to get the conversation started about the importance of the women's market globally and the economic power of women around the world.

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to hear Meg Whitman, ceo of eBay, speak to a small group of women business and community leaders at The Henry Ford, museum that includes most of the major inventions of the 20th century.

As Whitman discussed the power of eBay to transform commerce, her comments reminded me of a report by The Economist in April 2006 on "womenomics." The magazine argued women--not the rise of the Internet, China or India--have been the major engines of global economic growth in the past two decades. The World Economic Forum also has found a correlation between sexual equality--as measured by economic participation, education, health, and political empowerment--GDP per head.

Here is a link to a blog on "womenomics" and pdf of the study: http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/2006/04/womenomics.html.

What intrigued me about these two ideas--women and the Internet--as Whitman spoke was that The Economist may have missed a larger point. The economic equation may not be that women are more important than the Internet, China, or India in terms of economic growth, but that women have been a primary reason for why the Internet, China, and India have become so important to our global economic growth.

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Two events in the past 10 days put me in mind of gender inclusivity--an idea that I put forward in my book (www.thepowerofthepurse.com). The idea is that we have spent far too much time separating genders in our marketing efforts. That may seem strange coming from an author who writes at length about how to reach women. But sometimes--and increasingly more often with younger generations--you can succeed by reach both genders by being inclusive--as opposed to exclusive.

In late January, I spent two days with an amazing group of women as part of Yahoo!'s executive women's retreat in Key Biscayne, Fla. To protect the private nature of the event, which allowed us to speak freely about issues facing these marketers today, I'm not disclosing the names of the attendees or the companies for which they work. The women are all at the top of their games in the hospitality, pharmaceutical, financial and consumer-goods industries, to name a few.

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