2 responses to “Rise Of The Sheconomy”

1. Stephen King says:

   December 14, 2010 at 3:21 am

   It is difficult to use gender alone as a predictor of performance because it varies widely by organization, unlike age, for example, which is a nearly universal predictor.

   There may be some overall trends: women may be somewhat more premium-driven (you might call this value-driven) and possibly more likely to become monthly sustainers, etc. These differences aren’t likely great enough to afford more than modest changes to your efforts.

   However, if you look at gender along with age I think you’re likely to see some real generational trends. For example, the ratio of women to men in your under-50 age groups is probably much higher than in your older groups and the younger women will probably out-perform their male peers of the same age.

   Because donor files skew so old, these trends are masked if you look at gender by itself. Males may look like they give higher averages because there are more of them at the older end: they do give larger gifts…but only because of their age.

   You’re also likely to find this same phenomena if you look at other variables. For example, your on-line donors, may actually be as good as your direct mail donors if you compare them age for age. On-line skews younger however, so overall they appear to perform less well.

   The rule of thumb here is that you should isolate your most predictive variables first (age, say) before tackling ones that are less dominant (gender, for example) or you’ll end up on the wrong road.

2. Kay says:

   December 14, 2010 at 11:06 am

   As a female donor and consumer, I’ve learned the hard way that nobody seems to know that I’m the one making spending and giving decisions in my house. Some examples would be: my alma mater, who insists on putting my husband’s name on donor rolls even though he has expressly declined this recognition; Money magazine, who put my husband’s name on my magazine subscription – and dismissed my requests to correct it; our bank, who put my husband’s name first on our bank accounts and checks until he and I repeatedly requested the opposite listing of our names; several subsequent mortgage companies, who put my husband’s name first on official papers even though we asked them not to (and I’m the one with the better credit rating); and the car dealership who simply could not understand that my husband did not want part ownership in my car because he wanted me to establish credit in my own name, for my own protection in case anything ever happens to him. I have 20 years of individual consumer and giving history, and most of it is being attributed to my husband.

   While this sounds a bit like a rant or sour grapes, that’s not the point of this comment. The point is that I know these organizations all have records “clearly indicating” that my husband is the consumer who chose them. But they are wrong, and they simply can’t be bothered to correct their records. So how can they trust their data, when their systems are systematically skewed to favor the male consumer? If the default setting on a record is “Mr.”, how can that record be trusted to reveal any consumer or donor trends?

   Slicing and dicing data a million ways is all well and good, IF your data is correct to begin with…but how can any of us be certain that our databases are correct, when there is seemingly overwhelming evidence that the data we are mining is gender-biased?