The Female Consumer

There’s a lot of “insight about women” floating around, and most of it is a confident number with nothing behind it. (The famous one, that women “control 85% of spending”? I’ll get to why I won’t repeat it.) So I went and checked the actual research, binned anything I couldn’t trace, and pulled the rest into something you can genuinely use. Here’s what the evidence really says about how your customer buys, who she trusts, and what makes her walk away. Founder to founder.

The short version

1. Lead with momentum, not size. The best fact about your customer isn’t a share-of-wallet number, it’s the direction. Women’s discretionary spending has grown faster than men’s for two years running, and their incomes are climbing faster too (Bank of America Institute, 2024 to 2025). Her wallet is getting bigger.
2. The influence is real, the famous stat isn’t. Women influence an estimated 70 to 80% of consumer spending (NielsenIQ), but mostly as the lead decision-maker inside a household, not as a controlling bloc. Say “influence,” not “control 85%.”
3. Trust comes before the sale, and proof beats polish. The most trusted recommendation is someone she knows (Nielsen, 2021). Social is where she discovers you and one of the least trusted places to be sold to. Real reviews and a real founder voice beat influencer gloss.
4. Your founder edge is real, but conditional. Roughly half of women feel brands don’t understand them. You can close that gap, but only by showing it, never by saying “we get women.” That line is the exact move the research says she punishes.
5. Getting it right makes money. Brands that portray women accurately and skip the stereotypes sell more and keep customers longer (Unstereotype Alliance with Oxford Saïd, 2024). This is a growth lever, not a box-tick.
6. Performative values backfire. Empowerment messaging only lifts a brand when she believes it. If it reads as “fempower-washing,” it does the opposite. Show your values in what you do, don’t announce them.

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1. Your customer’s spending power (and the number to stop quoting)

Here’s the number that matters more than the size of the prize: your customer’s wallet is growing. Women’s discretionary spending has risen faster than men’s for two years straight, and their incomes are climbing faster too (Bank of America Institute, 2024 to 2025, from their own anonymised transaction data, so this is real spending, not a survey). You’re not fighting over a fixed pie. You’re building for a market that’s getting bigger, which is the whole case for investing in the relationship now rather than later. (That dataset is US-based, worth a note.)

A quick word on the stat you’ve probably seen, because it tells you something about all the others. You’ll have read that women “control 85% of consumer spending.” Please don’t use it. I tried to trace it and it goes back to a marketing study from the mid-2000s with no published method, around twenty years old, and it quietly swaps “influence” for “control,” which aren’t the same thing. The honest version is still brilliant for you: women influence an estimated 70 to 80% of consumer spending (NielsenIQ), and roughly 70% of women say they make all or most of the household purchases (CivicScience, survey of 80,000+ US adults). I’m flagging it because if a stat can’t be traced, it shouldn’t go in front of your customers or an investor, and you shouldn’t have to learn that the hard way.

For the big picture, two separate 2024 studies land in the same place: women manage roughly $32 trillion in global spending (NielsenIQ, 2024; BCG, December 2024). You don’t need the trillions to run your brand on a Monday, but they’re handy when you’re making the case for your category to a stockist or an investor. NielsenIQ also reckons women will influence around 75% of discretionary spending within five years (that one’s a projection, so treat it as a direction, not a fact).

Three of the biggest consumer categories are ones your customer leads, and all three are growing rather than niche. Beauty is about a $441 billion market heading toward $590 billion by 2030 (McKinsey with Business of Fashion, 2025). Consumer wellness is around $1.8 trillion (McKinsey, 2024), with women’s health repeatedly called out as underserved. And closing the women’s health gap alone could add roughly $1 trillion a year to the global economy by 2040 (World Economic Forum with McKinsey Health Institute, January 2024). One pattern worth designing for: in younger customers, beauty and wellness are merging into one budget (think ingestible beauty, active-ingredient skincare). Gen Z and millennials are 36% of US adults but over 41% of US wellness spend (McKinsey, 2025).

One honest caveat so you pitch this right: most of that spending happens inside shared decisions, not as a solo bloc. Around 70% of shoppers say a partner shapes the final call (Salsify, 2024). So your customer is the lead decision-maker in her household, not a lone buyer. Speak to her that way.

2. How she actually decides

Trust comes first, every time. Roughly 81% of people say they need to trust a brand before they buy (Edelman), and about 86% say authenticity matters to their choice (Stackla/Nosto). Those aren’t women-only numbers, they’re the floor everyone’s working from. Your job is to clear it faster and more convincingly than the brands she’s comparing you with.

Proof beats polish. The most trusted recommendation isn’t you, a celebrity, or an influencer. It’s someone she knows. 88% of people trust recommendations from people they know, more than any other source (Nielsen, 2021). And here’s the bit that should shape where you spend: social media is where she discovers things, but it’s one of the least trusted places to be sold to, influencers especially, because she assumes the content is paid or AI (McKinsey, 2024 to 2025). So use social to get found, and convert with the real stuff: genuine reviews, real customer content, your own honest founder voice. Polish loses to proof. A good one to point at here is Mallows Beauty: Laura Mallows built her brand on unedited, real-skin content and selling live on TikTok, visibly herself rather than retouched, and it worked.

She’s careful with money, but careful isn’t cheap. Most Gen Z and millennial shoppers across the UK and Europe traded down somewhere in late 2024, while still happily splurging on the things that matter to them (McKinsey, 2025), and financial insecurity has jumped in the last year (48% of Gen Z and 46% of millennials feel insecure, up from 30% and 32%, Deloitte, 2025). The move isn’t to discount. It’s to make the value obvious: cost per use, how long it lasts, the result, where it’s made. And one that’s in your favour: around 47% of people say a brand being independently owned matters to their decision (McKinsey, 2025). Your founder-owned status is an asset. Don’t hide it.

3. Your edge as a female founder (and where it runs out)

Here’s the gap you’re built to close. Roughly half of women say brands don’t understand them, and almost none feel truly understood (a 2025 survey via Marketing-Interactive, so I’d treat the exact figure as directional, but the direction is backed up below). That’s not a problem with women. It’s a failure of the brands selling to them. You live your customer’s reality, which is the one thing a big agency or a faceless competitor can’t fake.

And the case for a female-founded brand is strongest when it stands on competence, not sentiment. Women-founded startups have generated 78 pence of revenue per pound of funding, against 31 pence for male-founded ones (BCG/MassChallenge, 2018), and they manage it while all-female teams get roughly 1% of US venture funding (PitchBook, 2024). That’s not a sob story, it’s proof you build efficiently. Frame it that way.

One important limit, because getting this wrong backfires. Your edge is real in the doing: the lived insight, the efficiency. It is not an automatic free pass on trust. The research is consistent here, women reward this only when it’s shown, specifically, and never when it’s announced. The second a brand says “we just get women,” it’s making the exact move this audience punishes. So show it, in your product, in how precisely your copy speaks to her, in who you put on the page. Then it compounds. Glossier is the classic example: it grew by building products around what its customers actually told it they wanted, so the understanding was shown in the product, not just claimed in the marketing.

4. What makes her walk away

The best reason to take this seriously is that it makes money. Brands that show women accurately and skip the stereotypes saw +3.46% short-term and +16.26% long-term sales, were 62% more likely to be a first choice, and won 15% more loyalty (Unstereotype Alliance, UN Women, with Oxford’s Saïd Business School, 2024, across 392 brands over four years). Getting this right is a growth lever, not a box-tick.

But it has to be real. Empowerment messaging only lifts a brand when she believes it. When it reads as “fempower-washing,” it triggers the opposite, skepticism and backlash (peer-reviewed femvertising research, 2024). The rule of thumb: never make a values claim you can’t point to in what the brand actually does.

And it’s nowhere near solved, which is exactly why it’s your opening. Only 16% of women feel they’re usually portrayed accurately (ANA SeeHer, 2024). 77% say diversity in advertising influences what they buy, yet only about 5% of ads show women in non-traditional roles (Kantar, 2025). Around half of women also reported experiencing discrimination in the past year, roughly twice the rate men did (Kantar, 2024), so she has the lived experience to spot tokenism instantly, and she’ll punish it. The whole industry is getting this wrong. That’s your white space.

One landmine to sidestep: the “pink tax.” There’s some evidence women’s products are priced higher (a 2015 New York study found around 7% more), but later peer-reviewed work found little real difference once you compare like for like (Kellogg/Northwestern, 2021). The safe, honest position is simple: price with parity. “Pink it, shrink it, charge more” is something your customer actively resents.

5. What this means for your brand

Pulling it together, here’s what the evidence actually asks of you. The good news: it’s the kind of brand you’re already trying to build.

1. Lead with what you know, not gender solidarity. Open on the thing your category gets wrong and you get right, shown through your product and the detail. Let “run by someone who lives this” be obvious, not a slogan.
2. Convert with proof, not polish. Reviews, real customer content and your honest founder voice do more than any influencer placement. Get found on social, close with the real stuff.
3. Own the relationship. A customer whose spending is growing and who buys on trust rewards brands that keep her close, through email, SMS and community, rather than renting her attention. The repeat purchase is where the money compounds.
4. Justify the premium, price with parity. Show the value (results, longevity, where it’s made) instead of discounting, and never price in a way that smells like a pink tax.
5. Show your values, don’t say them. If you can’t point to what the brand does, leave the claim out. Said-not-shown is the one that backfires.

A note on how I read the evidence

One last thing, because it’s the bit I’m proud of. I left a fair amount out of this on purpose: the “85%” stat, the “91% of women feel misunderstood” line, and a cluster of viral Gen Z numbers that pointed at studies which don’t seem to exist. I’d rather hand you fewer facts you can actually stand behind than a longer list that falls apart the moment someone checks. Everything here has a name and a year against it. Where something’s directional or from a vendor, I’ve said so. Quote any of it in front of an investor or a customer without worrying.

That’s your customer. The rest of this library is about what to do with her.

Madison, Mad Social

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Sources

• Bank of America Institute, consumer spending data, 2024 to 2025 (women’s discretionary spending and income momentum)
• NielsenIQ, Shaping Success: Women’s Impact on the CPG Landscape, 2024 (global spending; influence and discretionary projection)
• Boston Consulting Group, The $32 Trillion Opportunity, December 2024
• CivicScience, household-purchasing survey (80,000+ US adults)
• Salsify, Consumer Research Report, 2024 (household decision influence)
• Silverstein and Sayre, The Female Economy, Harvard Business Review / BCG, 2009 (category decision dominance, dated)
• McKinsey with Business of Fashion, The State of Fashion: Beauty, 2025 (beauty market size)
• McKinsey, Future of Wellness, 2024 and 2025 (wellness market; generational wellness spend)
• World Economic Forum with McKinsey Health Institute, Closing the Women’s Health Gap, January 2024
• Edelman, Trust Barometer (brand-trust precondition); Stackla/Nosto (authenticity)
• Nielsen, Global Trust in Advertising, 2021 (peer recommendation)
• McKinsey, State of the Consumer and social-commerce research, 2024 to 2025 (discovery vs trust; trade-down; local ownership)
• Deloitte, 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey (financial insecurity)
• Marketing-Interactive, 2025 (the “feeling understood” gap, cited as carrier)
• BCG/MassChallenge, 2018 (revenue per pound of funding)
• PitchBook, 2024 (share of venture funding to all-female teams)
• Unstereotype Alliance (UN Women) with Oxford Saïd Business School, Inclusion = Income, September 2024
• SeeHer / Circana, GEM Lift analysis, 2024
• Gomez-Borquez et al., International Journal of Consumer Studies, 2024 (femvertising and authenticity)
• ANA SeeHer, 2024; Kantar, Brand Inclusion Index and IWD 2025 (representation gap; discrimination)
• New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, From Cradle to Cane, 2015; Kellogg/Northwestern, Marketing Science, 2021 (pink tax, both sides)

Prepared by Mad Social. Figures are point-in-time (2024 to 2026) and attributed to the named source. Directional and vendor-sourced figures are labelled as such in the text.