There was a brilliant article making the rounds in the creative community last week, on the new advertising industry website called CampaignLive.com, the US version of a UK publication whose corporate parent owns, among other things, PR Week.

The author starts the article with a statement that ripped through social media like a spike heel: “The woman who does not require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet.” Writer Kat Gordon makes a case for 2015 being the year women in advertising use social media as the accelerant to create a better ad world than the one where agencies still refer to “women’s accounts” as “mops and makeup.”

While a lot of what she says is a bit of “inside baseball” to those not specifically in the ad industry, anyone in marketing/communications – whether public relations, advertising, corporate communications, social media, outside agency, in-house marketing, or some combination thereof – should understand that pinkwashing isn’t going to cut it anymore. “Female Empowerment Advertising” is yesterday’s Chromebook. Women now make up 52% of the population, so we are remarkably helpful and creative when it comes to understanding how to approach an overwhelmingly female marketplace. Let’s just say we know whereof we speak. As Gordon says, “I’m talking about calling out everything, ranging from all-male creative departments to wage disparity to things we do mindlessly like STILL have Miss America-types handing out the hardware at award shows.”

So, regardless of your gender, if you are looking to engage the female consumer, you better be thinking like a woman.