It's Tuesday morning, 7:14. Lena is standing in the kitchen, making her first purchasing decision of the day: oat milk, the old carton is empty. By the time she turns off the lights tonight, there will have been a good thirty more. Lunchbox snacks for the kids, a new bike helmet for the eldest, laundry detergent, the birthday present for Saturday, booking the campsite for the summer holiday, winter boots, a subscription to the learning app the teacher recommended.
Thirty decisions. Thirty times money flows. Not one of them shows up in any economic analysis as what it is: an economic force that moves markets.
The number that sums this up is so large you might take it for an exaggeration. It is not.
How much purchasing power actually lies in women's hands?
Women are responsible for, or influence, around 80 percent of all everyday consumer spending worldwide — as direct buyers or as the primary decision-makers in the household. That makes women's purchasing power the single largest economic factor in the world: one that neither countries nor the financial industry address systematically.
This number is not new. In its best-known form it comes from a Harvard Business Review study from 2009, written by Michael Silverstein and Kate Sayre. "The Female Economy", they called their article — and the central thesis was as simple as it was unheard: women are the largest growth market in the world. Bigger than China and India combined, measured by economic potential. Read that again: a growth market bigger than China and India combined.
Since then, numerous studies have confirmed and sharpened the core finding. Bloomberg put the global volume of spending women control at over 34 trillion US dollars. McKinsey analysed that women not only dominate in consumer spending but are increasingly the fastest-growing client group in wealth management too — with estimated asset growth set to rise disproportionately by 2030.
The 80 percent break down into three levels:
Direct spending: products and services women buy themselves — food, clothing, health, education, household.
Household decisions: purchases where the woman is the lead decision-maker, even when the account is in the partner's name or shared — furniture, holidays, insurance, choice of school, larger electronics.
Influence decisions: purchases where women do not put the final signature on the deal but steer the selection process — as with property and cars. Real-estate studies show that in couple purchases women substantially shape the search and the choice of property, and that the final buying decision often rests with them.
80 percent. Why is this number so little known?
The invisibility of women's purchasing power is no accident. It has structure — and it has reasons.
The first reason is cultural: consumption is seen as soft, investment as hard.
The economy measures what it considers important — and what it considers important has historically been defined by men. Share prices, investment volumes, gross domestic product: those are the numbers that make headlines. Private household consumption appears in economic reports as an aggregate, not as a gendered force. That behind the abstract term "private consumption" stands a concrete female decision-maker is, statistically, simply invisible.
When an economy talks about its growth drivers, it names exports, investment, government spending. Private consumption gets a mention, but as an anonymous mass — not as a force that can be strategically shaped. And certainly not as a female one.
The second reason is statistical: household spending is attributed to the household, not to the decision-maker.
In the national accounts there is no line for "spending made or driven by women". The money flows out of a household, not out of a person. This aggregation is methodologically understandable, but it obscures an economic reality. If one person in a household makes 80 percent of the purchasing decisions and the other 20 percent, then "household" as a unit fails to capture that dynamic.
In the data that companies, banks and policymakers use, women's purchasing power does not exist as a category in its own right.
The third reason is economic: the finance industry has no product for purchasing power — so it ignores it.
Banks and fintechs alike make their money from asset management, loans, insurance. Purchasing power — the daily spending of money — is not an asset in their model but a cost factor. Something to be optimised, not something to be used.
When the industry addresses women at all, it does so with "feminised" marketing ("Abs. Glutes. Assets.") or with educational offers: "Learn to invest. Learn to save. Learn how money works." The message behind it is always the same: you spend too much, learn to do it better. But no one says: you are spending anyway — let's talk about where the money goes, what it does there and, above all, what you could get out of this enormous purchasing power. Thinking of purchasing power as a lever — not as a problem but as a resource — is a shift in perspective the financial world has yet to make.
Purchasing power that knows where it wants to go
The steering of collective purchasing power is well documented empirically. The American Buy Black movement has used this effect systematically — not as a boycott but as deliberate capital allocation within a community.
The effect was measurable in Europe too: during the pandemic, local retailers saw demonstrable increases in revenue as soon as consumers understood the link between their buying behaviour and local economic strength. The effect was there — as long as the infrastructure was right. Where there were easy ways to order locally, it worked. Where there were not, the goodwill fizzled out.
The pattern is always the same: purchasing power has an effect when three conditions are met.
First: an awareness that money has a direction. Second: a group large enough to create market effects. Third: an infrastructure that makes it easy to change direction.
For women, the first condition is increasingly met. More and more consumers want to know who profits from their money. The second condition was always met — 80 percent of consumption is no niche, it is the market. The third condition — the infrastructure — is missing.
So far there is no place where women can find out which companies, products and brands are women-led or women-run, shop there, and themselves benefit from precisely that decision. No infrastructure for the Female Economy, in other words.
"Feminism is also this: asking who owns the shop."
Where does this money flow today?
It is worth asking the question concretely: if women account for 80 percent of consumer spending — who does that money reach?
The bulk flows into companies whose executive floors, boards and ownership structures are male-dominated. In Germany in 2025, fewer than 25 percent of board members of listed companies were women. In the Mittelstand it looks only marginally better. And the companies founded and led by women — growing in number, but still in the minority — have no systematic access to the purchasing power that women control.
The largest group of consumers in the world finances, with its daily spending, mostly structures that do not represent it. Not by intention — but for lack of alternatives. There is simply no easy way to connect a purchasing decision with the question: who is my money flowing to?
And yet that is exactly where a powerful decision lies — every day, in your own wallet. In a world where the line between economy and politics keeps blurring, conscious buying may be the most direct lever that remains.
And the market is growing: women-led businesses are the fastest-growing founding sector in almost every economy in the world. In the US, according to Forbes, the number of women-led businesses rose by 12% from 2022 to 2025 — almost twice as fast as male-led ones.
On one side, enormous purchasing power that has never been offered an alternative. On the other, brilliant businesses looking for customers. In between: nothing. No bridge, no platform, no system. Until now.
The infrastructure that was missing. Until now.
Purchasing power that flows deliberately into women-led businesses creates a cycle: more revenue for founders means more economic independence, more jobs — disproportionately for women — and more wealth-building on both sides. McKinsey estimates that full economic equality for women could raise global GDP by 12 trillion dollars. Purchasing power is not the only lever for that, but it is the one closest to hand. Because it needs no new legislation, no new funding programme, no new study. Only a direction.
Building that direction is not a philanthropic gesture. It is the logical next step for an economy that claims to take potential seriously. And it is exactly what WHERA does: an infrastructure that steers purchasing power to where it has the greatest effect — back to the women who generate it.
80 percent of consumer spending is no detail in a footnote. It is the largest lever women already hold — and have held for generations, every day, in every wallet.
In Lena's, too. At 7:14 in the morning, the oat milk is empty and once again a good thirty purchasing decisions lie ahead of her. The only question is whether her money keeps flowing into structures that do not represent her. Or whether it finally arrives where it comes from: with women themselves.
