No more are women confined to the four walls of their homes. Women across the country have more control over their life choices and path than ever before. They are entering the workforce at lightning speed. With access to more choices, they are working towards increasing their educational and career opportunities. It’s not about success in education and job alone; women are no more just looked upon as mere consumers, they are now also being looked upon as advocates of brands and good marketers. This change is attributed to the socio-economic and cultural shifts taking place in India.
At the ISB (Indian School of Business-Hyderabad), women students comprised 29 per cent of the class of 2013. During their placements last year, several major companies hired women in key roles such as director, chief strategy officer and general manager. Research has also indicated that gender equality is seen to increase the performance of the companies.
However, in an average year, just 14 per cent of graduates hired at mid-level positions in Indian businesses are women, compared to the global figure of 21 per cent.
There is a still a marked decrease in the proportion of Indian women in senior positions in the workplace. An international study indicates that the proportion of women in senior positions in the Indian workforce fell from 19 per cent in 2013 to 14 per cent in 2014. Globally, the proportion of senior roles filled by women in 2014 is 24 per cent, with China at 38 per cent, Eastern Europe at 37 per cent, and Southeast Asia at 35 per cent leading the way.
The decrease occurs despite the intention to improve female participation in the workforce and address the lack of women at the top levels. Indian companies are now consciously working for a regulation to get women on boards and facilitate their career paths. Female representation on executive boards of Indian companies currently stands at a meagre 5 per cent.
Amidst all these challenges, what is interesting to note is the fact that the last decade has seen women evolving as consumers and on the workforce there has been an exponential increase in women occupying lead roles in marketing function in businesses, in India. There is a heartening trend of larger numbers of women CMOs here. A decade ago this was a male-dominated work function and women were mainly associated with HR function.
Dipika Warrier (Executive Director – Marketing, Pepsi), Nadia Chauhan Kurup (Joint MD and CMO, Parle Agro), Tanya Dubash (Member, Board of Members of Godrej Group of Companies, Executive Director and President – Marketing), Sonali Dhawan (Marketing Director, P&G) and Anisha Motwani (Director & Head – Marketing, Max Life Insurance) are some of the excellent examples of this.
A lot of the women CEOs of today started their career as marketing professionals. For example, Vinita Bali (MD, Britannia) and Sangeeta Pendurkar (MD, Kellogg India Pvt Ltd) successfully held CMO positions before taking over as CEOs.
Women are experiencing more success in marketing now than in the past. This is mainly because today the women consumers have evolved over the years. And who better than a woman can understand another woman? Today, women control the majority of purchasing decisions in a household and their influence is growing. Indian women consumers are now changing the definition of ‘luxury’. The old Indian concept of ‘ Ghar, Gaadi aur Naukri ’ (house, car and job) is being replaced by the idea of using every opportunity to lead an easy, smooth and comfortable life. Intelligent, educated, affluent women consumers in India are making their own decisions and demanding more luxurious products from designer clothes to expensive mobiles to big cars to weekend homes.
Women possess empathy and intuition. It is often said that women marketers approach marketing differently. Men tend to think in linear, hierarchical terms. They want the facts, the numbers and the statistics. Women marketers, on the other hand, tend to approach topics more contextually, interconnecting knowledge, experiences, facts, opinions, relationships, goals and dreams in a non-linear, web-like manner.
In today’s crowded marketplace, where consumers have infinite choices and countless legitimate alternatives, there is an overload of options that is actually paralysing people and pushing them into decisions that are not the most rational ones. Instead, decisions are being taken emotionally.
The reason why women have greater influence on media and marketing is because they are better at understanding the confused consumers. They base their strategies on the real needs of the consumers. Male marketers are more likely to make the critical error of assuming that their own thoughts and reactions can be extrapolated to those of the market. Women are also better at decoding non-verbal communication, picking up subtle nuances from tone of voice or facial expression, or judging a person's character.
Women marketers are also aware that no woman is similar to another and therefore catering to their distinct needs is key. Think about the products women of different age groups purchase and the media technologies they use and develop generational marketing strategies that address the diverse habits that drive behaviour.
As women form the backbone of any emerging society, especially in India, this phenomenon is having an impact on the rest of society.