There has been a lot of buzz going around the Internets about Neil Dutta’s recent report called “Global Girl Power.” Dutta, a Bank of America VP economist, claims that the force that will lead our recovery forward will not be tech, not manufacturing, but, yes, you guessed it, women.
According to a follow-up article in The Atlantic, women leaving behind the apron for a skirt suit have added almost two percent to annual GDP growth since the 1920’s. Undoubtedly, adding women into our labor participation numbers is important to our overall economy. Yet as I mentioned before, women are grossly underpaid and under represented in boardrooms, as F500 CEO’s, and on Wall Street.
So what is Dutta really talking about? Well, his main point is that women are earning a decent majority of advanced degrees, which will give them a better chance in the fight for jobs. The Baml economist also says that the major sectors experiencing job growth are healthcare services and education- fields that are historically dominated by women.
Additionally, men have seriously lost out on the benefits of muscle power in recessionary sectors like manufacturing and construction. Added all together, women are massively going to be increasing their purchasing power. So, Dutta’s conclusion sounds great for consumer discretionary firms directly targeting, and loved by, women.
First off, do you buy into Dutta’s thesis? If so, would the stocks below benefit from a recovery lead by women?
- Tupperware
- Tiffany’s
- HSN (Home Shopping Network)
- Macy’s
- Nordstrom
- LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy)
Any other suggestions are welcome
This is flat-out stupid. No matter how many times people demonstrate that there is more difference within male and female groupings than between them, someone always insists on making these kids of generalizations. The study is clearly just begging for headline attention with a conclusion like that. As an example, it seems to me that the author has misunderstood the implications of the college situation. Women are getting more degrees than men yes, but everybody is getting more degrees than before, and this partly facilitated by the fact that most degrees are shit. So what about non-shit degrees. Men still make up the vast majority of engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, etc...
And besides all this, what on earth is the relevance of such a conclusion? Is it possible to go long women and short men? Will this be relevant for hiring? Product ideas? No.
What about the brands. Well, for one, marketers have known for decades that women, who do the majority of grocery shopping, already dominant the decision making on things like Tupperware, Macy's and HSN. So there's nothing new there.
The Man pretty much nailed it.
Also, "Well, his main point is that women are earning a decent majority of advanced degrees, which will give them a better chance in the fight for jobs."
Wait what? Um, agree to disagree.
in usless shit like biology
Wow, you guys are in for a rude awakening.
Women in cities make more than the average man right now. The two trends keeping them from totally dominating are 1. they don't want to work the same hours and 2. they typically DO have degrees that represent interest over utility. But these are generalizations: plenty of chicks I know studied finance/econ and did a women's lib or liberal studies second major. There's probably 10x the amount of women in finance than there was a decade ago....underestimate them at your own peril.
The flip side to this is that about a million +/- veterans will be / are going to college and will be joining the workforce, so that will skew things in a couple of years. Some are women, but the vast majority are men, and these are the types of guys that will more often dominate in the workplace.
This is what the stats say. My opinion is irrelevant, but I think it's hot when a chick buys me a drink. If she 'expects' something in return, I'm ok with that ;)
the average is irrelevant. the vast majority of wealth and income is created by the top 1%.
Men dominate and will continue to dominate at the top of every field, its in the more competitive nature of men(altough some people will never admit this and rationalize it in other ways, then again this is a good thing, if the vast majority of the population was not completely and utterly retarded, the top 1% couldn't dominate as much as they do).
On top of the more competitive nature there is also the fact that the male IQ distribution is more skewed than the female, and there are alot more men than women at the higher levels(and the lower levels).
Women will start earning more in the lower middle to middle class segment, investing in products serving that part of the population may be an interesting play.
Take the law firm across the way from me: a few dudes and one chick worth more money than god are the partners. They're in charge and they have $^wow. However, out of the employee ranks (including lawyers), the women average higher pay than men, and this is coming from the HR girl I talk to over there who knows how much everyone makes. I guess the bottom line for guys is that you want to be running a team/group or working for yourself to really get ahead.
Why the women are paid more, I don't know, I'm not a sociologist. But long story short, their work -> spending is pushing the economy forward in a lot of areas and has been for some time.
Leveredarb, women beat out men this past year in IQ tests. If you didn't know this, the majority of iq tests given are skewed by education and culture. There are some iq test versions that mitigate this but the ones that don't still tend to be the most widely used. As women become more educated (on a global level), the average iq rises. If you're still in disbelief, research it.
this is why the author is working for boa and not ms/gs
A few facts i'd like to highlight.
Walk into any hard science course in any top ranked university (or any for that matter). You will be able to count the number of women in the room on one hand. (Biology doesnt count).
The Dean (?) of harvard got fired for saying men are better at science.
Men and women are good at different things, however for some reason (have a look through the Guiness Book of records, or find me a single competitive activity that men and women compete against each other on equal footing on) men seem to do be better in the riskier side of life. This is deeply affected by survivorship bias. Far more men crash and burn than women too (but that isn't reported for discrimination), its the consequence of risk taking. Men are more risk seeking than women.
This is nothing but a publicity stunt by BoA. Lets see them put their money where their mouth is in who they employ. If what they say doesnt match what they do, you'll know what they really believe.
T
The Dean? LOL It was Larry Summers. He's the smartest guy in the room and everyone knows it. Women self segregate into different majors and occupations its true. But there's no evidence that the ones who enter STEM programs are any less skilled than men. That's what he missed.
The "Global" in the report title to me points to the research on women in lending particularly in the global south. It turns out when women manage money for households (or in some cases villages) 99% doesn't get spent on booze and drugs. Obviously that has interesting implications for global risk management in severely undeveloped markets.
The rest of the title:
BoA Says Women Will Lead Growth In the Kitchen
1) Dutta is right, that having more women in the workforce would increase the GDP, thus improve the recovery. However, if they are in low income government, education jobs, that will not add much to the economy, but probably will reduce unemployment, and probably raise taxes
2) I don't know if women will lead the world the way men do. My theory is that men have been dominant because they take more risks, thus understanding new developments better. Men are more likely to work in start-ups even though they may never be paid, why? It is because they see a golden bag down the road. However, women (and minorities) always come late into the game. Women got interested in banking only in late 1990's, the game was already over. The same can be said about Consulting and now PE. Now you hear that women want to enter the High Tech world, but it is too late, they weren't there when there was no money and the growth was high.
3) The reasons why women lag in the high growth fields may be because they are risk averse, They are risk averse because they are the one who take care of us (our moms) when we were weak as infant/child. The only way women can catch up with men in leading the economic world will have to give up on taking care of babies and spend 100 hours working for zero dollars for start-ups, riskier businesses.
BofA ML's U.S. senior economist Michele Meyers surely grows my big John
I'd love to see how nursing alone fuels/skews the income statistics. Its like 90%+ female and they make much more than the average income for Americans.
maybe I should become a nurse.
^Gay
Maybe, but I bet there are some straight guy nurses who crush their 90%+ female counterparts.
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