The Rise of the Gamma Woman

Yesterday the Meredith Corporation-responsible for some of the most gendered marketing on the block (Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, Parents, Ladies’ Home Journal, More, Fitness, etc)-released a study discussing a new demographic of women, Gamma women. These are women that are different from alpha women in their desire for success, money and stature. Gamma women thrive on sharing, changing the world around them and social networking, online and off.

The Gamma woman is one of 55 million American women* creating a groundswell in today’s new media and marketing landscape. Using multiple media–both online and off–she shares ideas, information, and recommendations with her vast network. The Gamma woman stands in the center of a web of positive personal connections: she aims to bring out the best in herself and others. Her sense of self is guided by her internal beliefs, passions, and priorities. She is motivated by the desire to interact, rather than to impress. She is her family’s strong center, her friends’ trusted ally, and she models the change she wants to see in the world.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this new demographic of women has yet to be properly marketed to.

The Gamma Factor: Women and the New Social Currency, explains how the social behavior, media habits and sheer magnitude of Gamma women represent a tidal force that is redefining the marketing model. By providing strategies and anecdotes for capturing the attention and advocacy of Gamma women, the report reveals how information travels within the Gamma landscape, and how marketers can effectively communicate with Gamma women to leverage the power of this vast and influential segment.

Reading the WSJ article and the executive summary of the report it is hard to figure out if they are talking about women or robots, but I think it is interesting that one of the groundbreaking lessons here is that women should be engaged with, not talked at. Is this an example of feminism going into the field of marketing? Ha, I wish. Corporate-driven, gender-based mass marketing makes no exceptions, everyone is a possible target for a strategic product sell.

So the transition they are seeing is that as women have increased access to different types of social phenomena, technology and work, they are doing interesting and creative things with them that benefit the people around them and society as a whole. And obviously this is the perfect thing to exploit to make a dollar. Market research is astounding.
Women’s behavior has changed as society has changed. Perhaps it appears on the surface that what influences us culturally has been decentralized and there has been a move away from the “type-A Alpha woman”-a pretty demeaning characterization in my opinion. But the internalized belief that material possessions equal status has not changed and it is pretty much a given that any break from the norm that “gamma” women possess will be re-focused on creating perfect feminine consumers through strategic marketing.