Commentary: The 'female-friendly' business

Much has been made over the rise of the female home improvement customer, which continues to be a central fixation of hardware store remodels and even a top entry in HCN’s own “trends to watch out for” at this year’s National Hardware Show.



The name of the game is bigger, brighter aisles, easily navigable formats, appealing displays, home and garden sections – women are visual customers, the conventional wisdom seems to go, and when shopping is pleasurable, everyone wins (and buys more).



Personally, I’ve grappled a good deal with the implications of a term like “female-friendly.” In most cases, it’s probably fair to say that the industry is seeking a “woman’s touch” to stay competitive and usher in a much-needed facelift. On the other hand, it’s hard to completely shake the feeling that retailers are dumbing it down to appeal to a demographic that was never expected to wield a power drill at home. This is, after all, coming from a segment of retail where women are frequently compelled to review a store based on how un-condescending the manager was when they showed up without a husband. A more cynical takeaway: men value substance; women merely gravitate toward pretty stores.



But all of this really just points to a more obvious inconsistency: for an industry that’s so intent on capturing female shoppers, there’s a noticeable lack of female executives – and their native insights – at the top of the ladder.



Home improvement is hardly alone in this. According to the Center for American Progress, women make up 14.6% of executive officers in the U.S., as well as only 4.6% of Fortune 500 CEOs. That’s despite the fact that they earn 60% of undergraduate and master’s degrees, holding 52% of all professional jobs in America.



Channel-specific numbers may well be even more dire. Veronique Laury recently made headlines for becoming one of the few – perhaps only? – female CEOs in home improvement retailing, replacing Ian Cheshire as chief executive of European retail chain Kingfisher. She also just became the fifth female CEO in Britain’s FTSE 100 index of blue chip companies. Here in the U.S., we have female executives of a slightly less prominent magnitude, including Maggie Hardy Magerko (president of 84 Lumber Company), Cally Fromme (former chair of the NLBMDA and CEO of Zarsky Lumber Co.), and Anne-Marie Campbell (president of Home Depot’s Southern Division).

There’s little wonder why an industry that was built by men, for men, would be especially slow to diversify within its leadership ranks. But if there’s one prevailing truth in a free-market society, it’s that change occurs fastest where there’s a profit to be made.