For the full text of 'Guys Left Behind' by Mark Penn please click here
Synopsis: Penn produces yet another insightful article from his ‘microtrend’ lineup. However, this feels more like a macrotrend with dozens of micro implications. The growing disparity between women and men (women achieving and succeeding more than men) will, potentially, have an impact on education, politics, the criminal justice system, and the workplace, to name a few areas.
The article has some good news for Democrats when Penn reveals that, “Women are also the majority of those voting in our elections. They made up 53% of the electorate in the 2008 presidential election, and women's top concerns -- including health care and education -- are at the heart of swing voters' concerns. Guys, who lean more Republican, have been losing political steam; at the moment, their issues just don't seem to be at the top of the agenda.”
Overall, however, the broad policy implications seem to say a few key things:
- In the not too distant future, women will make up a much larger portion of the tax-base, especially in the middle and upper-middle class levels.
- Government sponsored programs tailored to minorities and, especially, women, will have to start creating similar programs for men
- This obvious clash of interest (women becoming more influential in politics and a larger part of the tax base and men needing more social services) will increasingly become an interesting debate in the political arena
And, in the corporate world, more so than ever, pushing products tailored to women and women’s needs will be an increasingly successful way to build a brand – as more and more women create a wealthy achievement based class, this segment will become especially important for marketers, more important than it already may be. They will be extremely important when it comes to higher-end new age luxury products and products to ‘make life a little easier.” If you can combine the two, a successful marketing campaign is probably on your hands.
The ultimate question is, will this newfound achievement lead to more women leading Fortune 500 companies, presiding over America’s bastions of academia, or residing in the house at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave? For that, we will have to wait and see…
