Today’s Monday Masterclass is taken from a Sun-Herald feature on the 13th May, which provides an excellent insight into the lifestyles of so-called “wedgers”.

So… what’s a wedger?

The article describes them as the “in-betweeners” – women of 45 and over who are doing things all over again – careers, relationships and education.

They have teenage kids and ageing parents, their attitudes are closer to those of Gen Y than Gen X… and there are 2.2 million of them in Australia.

A Roy Morgan survey quoted in the article found that 5.7 million of Australian women aged 18-54 went online last month and 48% of them made purchases while they were there.

26% of their time online was spent researching purchases and an equal amount of time was spent social networking.

Kate Waterhouse at The Hoopla commented:
“Traditionally in buying cars or computers or white goods, women got intimidated by salesmen. Now social media allows them to do their research online, compare all the prices, so when they go in they’re actually really well informed and can negotiate. It’s empowering a generation.”

”They hold all the purse strings, as we know women make or influence 85 per cent of all consumer purchases. When it comes to personal income, this is the person that controls not just their own income but the household income as well. So they’re controlling millions – billions – of dollars as a group.”

If you haven’t happened upon it yet, The Hoopla was co-founded by Wendy Harmer and Kate Waterhouse and features issues that are relevant to wedgers – Mrs Woog and Nikki Parkinson are contributors.

You can read the full article here.

We’ll be following the increasing profile of wedgers closely – so many of The Remarkables’ readers fall into this demographic and the comments from The Hoopla team aligns exactly with what their readers are saying to them.

2012 = Year of the Dragon Wedger