The "She-conomy"- How women still are the marketers top target

The Number One target for Marketers - Women
By Thomas Sferlazzo- Section 80

In Betty Friedan's "The Sexual Sell," she states, "properly manipulated ('if you are not afraid of that word,' he said) American Housewives can be given the sense of identity, purpose, creativity, the self-realization, even the sexual joy they lack-by the buying of things. I suddenly realized the significance of the boast that women wield seventy-five percent of the purchasing power in America." This excerpt came from her book written in 1963. What is astonishing, is that this number has increased even more as we entered the 21st century. On a website geared towards helping marketers appeal to women better in our current societies form, women now hold more then 85% of the purchasing power in America. Half of the United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP), comes from just American women. Think about that, that means individual women hold half the market on their own (over $5 trillion), the other half consists of the government, men, small, and large companies. Other websites state this number is even higher, some feel they contribute over $7 trillion. That is larger then the entire Japanese economy, the fact coming from startupnation.com.
What I found interesting was how Friedan, went to great lengths to express how important it was for marketing to appeal to the multiple forms of the housewife and keep her content. It was in their best interest they felt to keep her in the home so she could spend money and provide life's amenities for her family during the day. Many different companies would go to great lengths to make the housewife of the fifties feel important. Friedan states, "Help her to 'justify her menial task by building up her role as the protector of her family-the killer of millions of microbes and germs,' this report advised. "emphasize her kingpin role in the family...help her be an expert rather than a menial worker... make housework a matter of knowledge and skill, rather than a matter of brawn and dull unremitting effort." Indeed, they really tried to keep women in a state were they would be complacent in the home and replace their feelings of mediocrity with a sense of fulfillment.
What is perplexing was the fact that during WWII women had the prominent role in the workplace while men were off at war. They provided for their families and worked all the jobs their husbands did and entered the workforce six million strong. Questions I pose to everyone why such a shift into the fifties, with women staying in the house, feeling desperate (No pun intended to the crappy show) and needing a sense of accomplishment, when many of their mothers had become skilled laborers that could rest their laurels on the objects they built? Obviously, the fifties were still a time when the man demanded to be the sole bread winner and the job market for women was still small but after putting in such time to hold down the fort while men fought; how were things able to revert so easily without change transpiring until decades later?
Another item to bring up is, how ironic it is that these marketing agencies an advertiser departments for companies only saw half the picture about women and purchasing power. They felt to remain successful they had to devote their power in appealing to women and keeping them in the home to buy things during the day. In today's society most families need two incomes to survive. That means both the husband and wife have jobs and have to share household duties (in a perfect world), and yet women still retain most of the purchasing power in America. Even more then before due to current statistics as shown. My question and topic of discussion here is, why were advertising agencies for all their inquiry into how a woman thinks, and their thoughts on holding onto social barriers (keeping women in the house), did they not foresee that a transition for women to acquire a career would have possibly even bolstered sales to even higher levels in the fifties and sixties? Think about it? Families would have had more money to spend on items that made life more economical and efficient.
Friedan states how department stores of the past would try to show women how spend new found money, one report went like this, "We symbolize our social position by the objects with which we surround ourselves. A woman whose husband was making $6,000 a few years ago and is making $10,000 now needs to learn a whole new set of symbols. Department stores are her best teachers of this subject."
It is an interesting topic to talk about, in regards to consumption it was easier for companies to pitch their advertisements to women whose lives were possibly sheltered, influencing them to buy things that felt they needed to remain important not only to themselves but to their families. A sense of importance can go a long way in being motivational, obviously companies knew that by twisting this motivation into buying power. "Somehow, somewhere, someone must have figured must have figured out that women will buy more things if they are kept in the underused, nameless-yearning, energy-to-get-rid-of state of being housewives." This may be true but then how can this explain the fact that women in our current society account for even more purchasing power then before, with most of them having a job of some sort or another?