Do You Know Any Queen-agers?

I’ve been seeing the trend develop for a while. It is buried in Mary Lou Quinlan’s book Just Ask A Woman which spends its time focusing on woman as consumers. It is the subtext to Miriam Muléy’s book The 85% Niche, which also is aimed at how to target women’s purchasing power. But now, a little more of the significance of the trend is emerging and there is a wonderful name that’s so descriptive I think it will catch on: Queen-Ager. The Sidney Morning Herald published a short article in yesterday’s newspaper entitled: Queen-agers Rule the Net. Their hypothesis is that there is a group of women sandwiched between Gen Y and the Baby Boomers. The bulls eye age is 45, and the largest part of the group is 40-49. These are tech savvy women whose focus is not on babies, beauty or fashion necessarily but who seek the information and respect to confidently go where they traditionally have not had easy access. In many ways it is about reinvention and the catalyst has been the internet. The internet with its easy access to information has empowered this generation by providing the hard facts that can help them overcome the aggressiveness of their fathers, brothers and their husbands (I believe I do it unwittingly) in performing tasks like negotiating the purchase of a car, computers or white goods. But also to do and achieve much more. According to Muléy, women hold the purse strings and make or influence 85% of all purchases. That’s economic clout but falls short of true significance. The idea behind Queen-agers is control and self-actualization. It is the idea that the combination of times we are living in and the information accessible by the internet, allow women of a certain age to move in a steeper trajectory than they set out on when they were teen-agers and they were just staring out and deciding who they wanted to be and what they wanted to achieve; now they can revisit and in some cases redefine themselves and live more fulfilling lives. This is powerful stuff if you think about it. It’s like waking up and discovering you’re bionic. I know a few Queen-agers and I’ll bet you do too.