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around our gender. We’re so close to it that we take it for granted, and we assume the opposite sex knows all about it and understands it, too.
    Not long ago, I went on a business trip to Italy. I was at a lively bar full of Italians, and there was another American in our group. He was a man in his fifties. Back in the United States it was the middle of football season, and this guy could not stop talking about his favorite team back home, the Philadelphia Eagles. He talked animatedly and at length about his favorite star players and controversial plays, none of which anyone in the room cared anything about.
    As the only other American present, I was embarrassed. This guy had forgotten himself; he couldn’t step out of his own culture long enough to realize that Italians—and the rest of the world, for that matter—were interested in an entirely different kind of football, and wouldn’t have any reason to be interested in the gossip and inner workings of the Philadelphia Eagles. They were all clearly bored by the conversation but trying to be polite. It was a cultural gaffe—the same kind of cultural gaffe that can occur with businesses that are trying to reach women when they don’t understand what really interests them and what doesn’t.
    Take consumer electronics as an example. Products are often sold by emphasizing technical descriptions that aremeaningless to anyone other than enthusiasts, who are likely to be male. Other examples appear almost everywhere you look. Many furniture stores still schedule deliveries during business hours, which requires customers to take a day or half day off work, a decades-old practice that assumes someone in the household stays home all day. Business-to-business ads use the language of war to sell their services, finding a thousand ways to call competitors “the enemy” without realizing that kind of language turns off female executives. Customer service numbers force busy callers into irrelevant sets of options that compel them to either scream into the phone or slam down the receiver. A woman buying a BlackBerry for her new job will be handed a belt clip that she will never wear, instead of something more suitable for a female wardrobe. Every day, in virtually every industry, the gender differences of the most powerful consumers are overlooked or untapped. The good news is that the opportunities for improvement—and subsequently increased sales—are vast, and the solutions are relatively simple once you train yourself to see the world through a woman’s eyes.
    Seeing the Forest as Well as the Trees
    L ET’S stop right here and take a moment to assess the situation. Here’s what we know:
• Women drive consumer purchasing .
In cultures around the world, gathering provisions for the household has long been considered an important part of a woman’s role. This is obvious.
• Men dominate the senior levels of most of the companies that make and market the products women buy .
This isn’t always obvious, because there are so many women in middle management.
• Men and women are so different, they often have trouble communicating with one another .
This is obvious to anyone who has ever lived with a member of the opposite sex.
• Understanding these differences can provide businesses with a significant competitive advantage, but it takes work .
This is obvious only to those companies that are already doing it.
• The gender gap is a source of missed opportunities and lost revenue, and it should be addressed through education and training .
Aha. This is the part that hasn’t been so obvious. Until now.
    This train of thought seems simple, but there are big reasons why many companies cannot yet see the forest for the trees, nor the opportunities that can open up for them when gender differences are understood in depth.
• Political correctness stifles frank discussion of the subject, even among women .
Because the glass ceiling still exists, many people are uncomfortable