What Women Want

If your target, like P&G’s, is largely female, allow us to bring to your attention the following insights, drawn from a major new study, Focusing On Women 2005, released by Statistics New Zealand yesterday. This new report uses information from the 2001 Census of Population and Dwellings as its baseline, and draws widely from sources such as the Ministries of Health, Education and Justice, New Zealand Police and the Department of Corrections.

• Majority Rule: In 2001 females made up more than half of the New Zealand population and two-thirds of the population aged 80 years and over.
• More Ethnicly Diverse: Numbers of Asian and Pacific peoples are growing the most rapidly. Mäori and Pacific peoples have a younger age structure than the general population.
• Women Of A Certain Age: the median age for females is projected to rise from 36.1 years at 30 June 2004 to 47.1 years at 30 June 2051.
• Parallel Imports: Twenty-three percent of New Zealand females were born overseas, mostly in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Asia and the Pacific Islands.
• Readin’ Ritin’ Rithmetic: At the time of the 2001 Census of Population and Dwellings, young women were more likely to leave school with a qualification (86 percent) than their male counterparts (81 percent).
• Sorority Rules: Women are now more highly represented in tertiary education than ever before. In 2001 women made up more than half (53 percent) of all tertiary enrolments, compared with 1971 when women made up just under a third (30 percent) of all tertiary enrolments.
• Care Bearers: There are still distinct differences between male and female fields of study choices. In 2001 the most common post-school qualification for women aged 15 years and over was in the field of health (22 percent), while for men it was in engineering and related technologies (33 percent).
• Nuclear-Free Families: Over the 30 years from 1971 to 2001, changes in marriage and childbearing patterns have resulted in an increased proportion of women living in a growing diversity of household types. Women are now considerably more likely to have children outside marriage. In 2001, 43 percent of births were to women who were not legally married, compared with 14 percent in 1971. The growth in ex-nuptial births can be attributed in part to increased numbers of women in de facto relationships.
• Going Solo: Women are more likely than men to be living alone (13 and 10 percent respectively). This is a likely consequence of women’s longer life expectancy.
• Race Relations: The ethnicity of women greatly influences their likelihood of living in an extended family. Pacific women were more likely to live in this type of family than women identifying with the other main ethnic groups, followed by Asian and then Maori women.
• The Parent Trap: Family formation has a major effect on women’s labour force participation, with rates dipping during the years when they are most likely to be raising children. Just 39 percent of mothers with children under a year old were in the labour force in 2001. Women’s labour force participation rate increased from 39 percent to 60 percent between 1971 and 2001, but it is still considerably lower than that of men (74 percent in 2001).
• Women’s Work: Employment growth in recent years has been much faster among women than among men, with almost 200,000 more women in jobs in 2001 than in 1991. Part-time job growth exceeded fulltime job growth in the early 1990s, but since then the majority of growth has been in full-time work.
• Good In Parts: Women are three times as likely as men to work part-time – 36 percent compared with 12 percent. Women are most likely to work part-time as young adults, around retirement age and at ages when they are likely to be raising children.
• Community Servitude: Women have higher rates of participation than men in all categories of unpaid work, both within and outside the household.
• Old Money: Women’s income from all employment types can be seen to have a strong relationship to age, reflecting the stages of childbearing and childrearing. Women’s earning life-cycle reaches two peaks, the first at 25 to 29 years ($20,900), and the second at 45 to 49 years when incomes are at their highest ($22,000).
• Professional Discourtesy: Differences in men’s and women’s median incomes were greater for those who had attained a higher degree than for those with lower-level qualifications. This is because the skilled workforce has more opportunity for career progression and advancement. The greater likelihood of women taking time out (eg for care giving) impacts on their income potential in comparison to men.
• Family Support: Women were more likely than men to be in receipt of some form of income support (27 and 19 percent, respectively). Women receive proportionately different forms of income support to men.
• Superwoman: Incomes of women aged 65 years and over are greatly dependent on the provision of New Zealand Superannuation. Withdrawal from the labour force into retirement around this age means there is little variance in the income received by people in this age group regardless of their age and ethnicity.
• Innosense: Females made up just over half of the population in 2001, yet they made up only 20 percent of all recorded apprehensions, 17 percent of convictions and 4 percent of those sentenced to a custodial sentence.
• Live Long And Prosper: In 2000-2002, female life expectancy at birth was 81.1 years, nearly five years more than for males (76.3 years). Females had a lower rate of death than males in all age groups, especially in the 15 to 24 years age group, where the male rate of death was nearly three times the female rate.
• Accident Prone: Males are over-represented in injury statistics such as traffic accidents, but more females than males are hospitalised for falls and for suicide and self-inflicted injury.
• On the Wagon: In 2002/03, females were less likely than males to have had an alcoholic drink in the past year, and female drinkers were less likely to have potentially hazardous drinking patterns.
• Diet Conscience: In 2001, the rate of females who were overweight (excluding obesity) was lower than that for males, but both sexes had similar rates of obesity.

You can download this 148-page report from the Statistics New Zealand website.

PS One additional female insight, courtesy new research from Human Synergistics: women are much happier in their jobs generally and are much more satisfied with their employment than their male counterparts.

Generally for males, job satisfaction comes from such factors as receiving respect, involvement, fairness of appraisals and heavy goal emphasis. For females, satisfaction comes from more relationship-oriented factors such as consideration, receiving respect and having respect for their manager.