Women make 70% of buying decisions, so why don’t we design for them? We need the right data and more understanding of women’s needs, says Edwina Dunn OBE
Edwina Dunn is a data science visionary, disruptor, risk taker and policy shaper, with an OBE for services to data and business. She’s the founder of The Female Lead, pioneered Tesco Clubcard, built a global data business (Dunnhumby) and sold it to Tesco for £92m. She’s a board member of RTAU (formerly CDEI) and HMRC.
My career in data began with the idea that if you study enough people, the predictability of what they’ll do is quite amazing. The 90s/00s was a golden era for big data as people discovered that it gives you accuracy in your predictions, consumers are not all the same, and they don’t all want the same thing. It sounds so obvious now but it wasn’t then. The magic we created at Dunnhumby [which Edwina co-founded] was simply the link between customers and products. We did something no one else was doing.
The backbone of most research and data about women was very simplistic: age, married or not, and whether they had children. The trouble is, it still is. But women are more complex than that.
The Female Lead has collected data from tens of thousands of women. It can help businesses understand what’s relevant and timely for consumers. We have to open companies’ eyes to the need for data on women, because when you say “look at all these differences” they realise, “We have to work harder.”
I believe women have three roles in society: citizens, colleagues and consumers.
First, as citizens, we do the majority of unpaid work, caring and low-paid jobs like nursing or teaching. Without women doing billions of pounds of unpaid work, society wouldn’t work.
Second, as colleagues, women have none of the real power. There’s been a lot of effort to raise our profile but the truth is, most of women’s roles at the board level are non-exec roles. If a company’s objective is to profitably satisfy customer needs, how can you do that if you don’t know what half the population needs or wants? This makes a powerful argument for diversity at the top of organisations.
Third, as consumers, women control 70% of all GDP spend, yet that’s not how we’re treated. I can open a joint bank account but the statement goes to my husband. It’s a shocker.
We need more transparency. It’s easy for companies to talk about what they think and what they hope to do, but we need to use data to show honestly whether they’re doing what they say they are. Not to name and shame but to find role models of people doing it well.
Retailers are brilliant at understanding that consumers are different and giving them offers that are different. They have the discipline, technology and beautiful rich data to do that. Tesco doubled its market share in under three years by using data to know the customer better. They turned our data on what people were buying into profitable information.
“Women can be a force for driving huge economic growth and we have to recognise that”
When there’s transparency of data, change will happen as companies will want to get the edge. Business leaders’ competitive spirit quickly comes out under pressure. Once you say “Look, this company is really good” they’ll say “I want to be better than them next year”.
The big growth area in using AI to design for women is health. Women’s unmet needs are enormous but most of the data sets driving AI are male skewed. If it’s all men deciding how AI is used, managed, controlled and regulated, AI is in danger of being relevant to only 50% of the population. These biases may not even be noticed.
“I see two opportunities for AI to drive economic growth through the female consumer. First, if AI could create opportunities for 100% of the population rather than 50%, that would be huge. Second, putting more influence in the hands of women could be one of the most important strategies for governments. It’s not about fairness; it’s about stimulating growth and innovation”
If all we want is for one business to win over others, that’s very male. But if we want to distribute, share, connect and equalise, that’s more likely to need a female. That’s psychology, not just my opinion. These are the real reasons why we should be empowering women more.
In future, more and more wealth will be held by women. As women decide they want to be advised by another woman, who understands their circumstances, there’s a shortfall. That’s a tremendous opportunity for financial services to say, “This is the way wealth distribution is going. Let’s reflect this in our business.”
Financial services are starting to recognise the role of women, but they don’t know what to do about it because the positions of power are held by men. Every FS organisation I talk to says, “We’d like to partner with Martin Lewis” but how about building a relationship with a woman financial adviser? We need to change mindsets.
You can’t put forward the case for women if there are no men in the room. Every time you say female, woman or girl there’s a shutter that comes down. But we 150% need men to care about the issue. There are a lot of excuses, like “there aren’t enough women in the pipeline”, but change isn’t going to happen if men aren’t on board.
Women can be a force for driving huge economic growth, and we have to recognise that, because I genuinely believe that when people see it they can do it, and it only takes a handful of us.
Interview by Huw James
Edwina’s book, When She’s in the Room, is available at bit.ly/edwinadunn
Written by Huw James.
