Stop and pay attention: The (un)surprising commercial value of women

When I invested in inclusive online women’s fashion retailer Eloquii (alongside other great investors), the thesis was that an expanded offering of fast fashion to include larger sizes was servicing an unmet demand. Not only an unmet demand, but a pent-up one — one that was absolutely salivating at being able to access the same fashion-forward products that a Zara or equivalent sells, and customers inhaled those products like a nicotine addict after a 27-hour flight.

That was a great investment exit for my investors and within a three-year time frame.

Since the Barbie movie release last month, it’s inspired eleventy million think-pieces and commentators waxing surprised at its commercial success, and proffering a number of explanations from the sublime to the ridiculous (ala Ted Cruz’s “Chinese communist propaganda”). They’ve also, predictably, included a number of caveats to minimise the commercial success — from “people didn’t know what it was about when they bought a ticket” to “it’s just because people were couped up with Covid for so long” or the more subtle dig that it’s an ‘outlier’.

Barbie was a smart, funny, feminist film that appealed to women because it took them seriously. That isn’t to say it didn’t appeal to men or a broader audience, I’m just saying the people behind the movie (the extremely talented Great Gerwig and fellow Aussie Margot Robbie, among many others) knew its audience, and knew that there was pent up demand.

I recently read that between Barbie, Beyonce and Taylor Swift tours, these three juggernauts alone have made a $9 billion economic impact. To be clear, men, women, children and everyone in between are going to see the concerts of these two incredible, generational artists, but it puts the exclamation point at the end of the statement that Women Can Make People A LOT of Money! But still to this day Taylor Swift has her songwriting contributions and abilities doubted or she is shamed for her dating life, it’s all just so utterly depressing that it seems her success is constantly being ‘taken down a peg’.

And then we get to the World Cup. As someone who used to play elite sport, and had a fork in the road where I had to choose academia or athletics to ground a career, it was no difficult decision at the time. “No one cares about women’s sport” “there is no money in women’s sport” was the common refrain. At the time, the assumption was that because there were few scaleable platforms to actually watch women’s sport, that no one wanted to watch women’s sport. This is like saying because there is no Taylor Swift concert in Adelaide this means no South Australians want to watch Taylor Swift. And then, as women’s professional sport started to get some traction, the discussion of pay inequality would come up and men (and yes, it was always men) would say “women will deserve to get paid the same as the men when there is proof people will pay the same money to watch women’s sport, or the advertisers are willing to pay the same money to advertise”.

Well, the 2023 World Cup has shown that in fact, very many people are interested in watching women’s football, thank you very much. And willing to pay money to watch it. I’m guessing the advertiser/sponsorship dollars are not far behind and so I’m confident pay equality will be here momentarily (sarcasm font).

The common thread here is that despite all evidence to the contrary, the commercial value of women is still consistently underestimated — as creators, as builders, as athletes and performers, as customers.

This is why women don’t get funded to the same level as men with venture capital, why companies that target women’s markets get less funding, it’s why women are still experiencing gender pay inequality, its why the infrastructure and support needed to allow women to participate equally in the economy is not considered a need it’s a luxury (childcare) and it is why the jobs that are staffed disproportionately by women (ie teaching and care industries) are not paid well enough. Because they are not valued.

Australia’s most (arguably) successful startup Canva includes a female founder (Melanie Perkins), and its graphic design platform overwhelmingly appeals to a young, female market — their largest age group of users is 25–34-year-olds, with 53.40% female. I’m a capitalist, and my primary role is to make my investors money. My investment portfolio, for the last 10 years, has consistently comprised of about a third of the portfolio founded by women.

I don’t have a quota, I like to think I just don’t underestimate half the pipeline and half the market.

Elaine Stead is the founder of Human VC. This article was first published on Medium.