Why I Spent Almost A Decade Studying Women + Beer

I had a question: “Why don’t more women enjoy beer? What’s that all about?”

That was my driving question for more than eight years, starting in 2008. It came to me in the fall of 2008, as I was considering what was next – following my first successful company. I had become familiar with beer people, ala My Fine Husband. As a professional brewer, he would invite me to many events he attended for his own development. The community is, by and large, very welcoming and I embraced the opportunities to meet new people who were bright, engaged and making things happen.

One day, fall 2008, My Fine Husband asked, “Are you going to submit to speak at the CBC? You like to speak.” [CBC = Craft Brewers Conference] Hmm… Well, it was an open call conference. And he’s right - I do enjoy presenting. I replied, “sure – what would I speak about though?” I hadn’t yet formulated Women Enjoying Beer (the marketing company I founded, studying of women and beer). So, I did what I’d done before: I submitted talks I knew I could deliver. Since there was time to build the presentations, I figured, why not.

Submit I did - two talks. One of them was chosen. Where’s The Other 50%?! Developing and Serving the Female Craft Beer Enthusiast Consumer Market.  When I was notified that I’d been chosen, I picked up the phone, called the director of the organization and introduced myself. It was a pleasant conversation though I could tell he didn’t know who I was. How? I asked him if he had any questions. He said, “Yes. Who are you?” HA! He was a great person to begin my formal foray presenting on the world of women and beer.

Knowing I had a few months to collect the information I needed to present, I got busy. How to gather information – data, insight – was my first order of business. Even though I knew in my guts that women enjoyed beer and that they were being neglected in marketing and addressed with less than full respect, I hadn’t conducted formal research before. My first attempt was quantitative (stats) + qualitative (psychographics, decision making factors). It was quickly obvious to me that the data that really mattered was qualitative – the why, the decision making psychographic insight that helps us understand why we do the things we do, and therefore why we make the choices we make. It was way more fascinating to me and way easier to ask for and get.

With the help of several people I knew in various cities, I hosted focus groups and started asking questions. I got good fast at figuring out what I really wanted to share with the beer community. Settling on 10 key questions, women in Des Moines, Sioux Falls, St Paul, Chicago, Kansas City and other places were willing – ne, keenly eager – to share their own views, opinions and insight on their relationship with beer. No one had asked them before.

What a watershed it was! I learned to keep a poker face, not interject or offer answers to questions posed by the guests (discussion happened afterwards) and listen to dozens upon dozens (hundreds, maybe thousands, eventually) share what beer was to them.

What did I learn? Tuns.

The number one question I got from the industry, curiously enough, was: what kind of beer do women like? It’s the wrong question. And really, if you think about it, rather idiotic. It’d be like asking men what kind of pasta they like. Or what kind of cars teenagers like. That’s not the issue or concern. The issue was that women do like beer. Of course they do. They’re human and they have taste buds (duh). The concern is then why the beer industry, all sizes of breweries and beer companies, was so bad at not marketing beer properly to women; why they allowed sexism, patronization, and flat out disrespect to women – in the drinking and buying population. Why was it okay to proffer such questionable images and disrespect, when they’re never express as much to a female they cared about.

I started hearing from women in the industry that they felt the same way – demeaned, diminished and disrespected.

While I could go on and on at this point, what I really want to get at is why I did this for almost a decade? Why did I stick with swimming upstream, fielding the wrong questions from the industry, and exhausting my energy trying to convince the beer business community that women mattered?

Here are a few fundamental reasons why:

1.    Women make up more than half the human population, consistently.

2.    Women are the predominant deciders of all financial decisions in American Households (some reports cite upwards of 95%, most cite at least 75+%)

3.    Women, like all people, enjoy flavor.

4.    They have always been involved in beer; brewing, drinking, buying. Nothing new.

So, if it wasn’t anything new to have women involved beer, why was the modern landscape of supposed pros so negligent to recognize women, to police insulting images and names, and to tolerate even one ounce of sexism?

You tell me. It’s the nut I haven’t cracked.

As I state in my 2015 TED talk, you can’t believe what people have felt free to tell me when they learn about Women Enjoying Beer. Yet no answers were or are forthcoming other than convention that people are simply too lax to fully own and patterns to change.

If I were to guess why more beer companies haven’t engaged with me to best serve females in all their import, I’d guess that dots have not connected in brains, the world over. Do they respect their moms? Yes. Do they have females they care about? Yes. So why hasn’t the connection been made that ALL females are the same brand of person, at least demographically, as all other females? Why isn’t respect inherent in beer for ALL drinkers?

Beats the hell out of me.

I got tired of waking up each day, feeling like I was missing something…like I couldn’t figure this out when I KNEW that women enjoyed beer. They bought, sipped, shared, gave. They loved, liked and savored it. They wanted in. And still, the beer community continues to be outwardly mystified at why they are losing market share. It’s not mystifying to me.

It’s this simple: women enjoy beer. They buy it, they drink it, they share it, they like it. Knowing this fact kept me at it for all those years. It drove my TEDx talk, lead to my first book, voluminous ground breaking research. And within it I built hundreds of relationships, with consumer and industry members alike, women and men.

The ain’t’-it-a-shame to all of this is that the knowledge I now have true pioneering insight that I gathered from willing women around the country + a few other countries languishes. That the industry isn’t sincerely interested in respecting women and growing their beer businesses is ultimately the beer community’s loss. Women will find other pursuits, they’ll quietly (damnably) keep drinking beer, even though. It pains me though to not have figured out why more beer professionals aren’t knocking at the doors to grow their business in what is now a superbly competitive beer market. To really want to embrace change for the better in the interest of equality and for the love of beer they so fervently profess.

Why do women put up with less than full respect? Again, it beats the hell out of me. Women are diverse. They all – myself included – have their own reasons for everything. It makes us stunningly colorful, that’s for sure. Ain’t that the truth for every population segment though. Yes.

I learned more than I ever thought I’d know about women, for better and otherwise. I’ve been asked more than a few times to host matching making events. You know, because I can invite women to taste beer and the men can show up. Seriously, it’s still not sinking in.  

Beer is for everybody. The work I have done within studying women and beer informs my life in every way, and that of My Fine Husband, who now notices slights, wallheadbanging articles that perpetuate and language he didn’t before. It’s still unfortunately pretty common. Unless we have a reason to notice something, we don’t see it. And it’s immediately changeable when we do notice it.

I see it everywhere: sexism on women. It infuriates me. And because the beer industry changing is like the Titanic turning around, I have chosen to change direction. I needed to wake up happily excited, not frustratingly stymied. My energies are still available to put forth into Women Enjoying Beer; it’s still the only company that has dedicated itself to studying women & beer, brand agnostic, for the betterment of the entire industry. I’m damn proud of the work I did, the voices who spoke up and were recorded.

The business is still alive (womenenjoyingbeer.com), the book’s for sale on my site too. When beer folk come knocking, I’m happy to field their queries - accepting serious clients only. Those interested in improving the world.

A lotta beer people seem to want free though, like it's not really worth the investment (yet they buy the HELL out of big data....[forehead slap here] and that ain’t what I’m serving up. My time, expertise, and hard earned knowledge is worth a lot. Least of all to the beer community. The women who spoke up deserve better.

For the record, I don’t think beer people in the industry are stupid. Not at all – that’s part of the consternation. I do know that many, if not most, still refuse to turn on all the lights and really see the gender landscape for what it is: grossly imbalanced, selectively ignorant and unwilling to change.

In the meantime, I’ve turned my own ship, after much soul searching, in another direction. The compass is now set for Connectivity – creating and building relationships on purpose and with purpose. In the end, there’s a good deal of similar movement and activity that I was already doing with WEB (communication, research, marketing, speaking).

The doors to the global population, serving on the Connectivity front, though are much wider and more welcoming. Come on over, the door’s open. Gingerjohnson.com

Onward.