A long time ago, one commentator suggested that every woman in an American household should go next door and contract with a neighbor’s family to do exactly the same work that she previously performed in her own home. That small economic action would compel every family to value the work performed by female members of the economy who otherwise would do the work at home for free -– uncompensated and under-appreciated financially.

Over the past forty years, women have done just that. Women who cooked meals at home for free now buy take-out and prepared-meals; purchase “heat and eat” meals; and today means away from home constitute a multi-billion dollar business. Because food preparation is more highly valued, Iron Man Chefs have commercialized the simple task of cooking, added “sur la table” accoutrements and mass produced gizmos that take food preparation to near Xtreme Sports heights.

Women used to sew shirts, trousers and dresses (and men made shoes). Today, the fashion industry is a mammoth economic sector with specialty wear spanning head to toes, from tots to the most senior among us.

Women used to pound their own organic herbs, spices and powders together into fragrances, soaps, shampoos, coloring and coverings. Now entire corporations specialize in one or more personal product sub areas, all of which are billion dollar revenue segments of the economy. After all, what is the size of the “incontinence” market?

Women used to be home-based teachers, then local school ma’arms, then public school teachers. Today, there are pre-schools, early childhood care centers, Montessori schools, charter schools, special needs education centers and magnet schools focused on sciences, math, music or another unique competency. There are extension education programs at every major public university to train women and men in the business of managing child care facilities.

Women used to shave men’s beards and trim the heads of all family members. Today most men shave themselves, but the product selection of razors, soaps, lathers and post-shaving products -– for men and women alike -– represents another multi-million dollar consumables sub-sector. Today, almost everyone gets his or her hair cut by a specialist. There are barbers for men, but also salons that specialize in women or child hair care and men are being attracted there as well. Manicures and pedicures, which used to be the preserve of the rich, are now a choice for the average middle class consumer. The decorative nail salon business, all by itself, is now the fastest growing economic opportunity for the female immigrant entrepreneur. There is a nail salon in almost every corner retail nook in the nation.

Next door to the nail salon is the dry cleaning establishment -– another service formerly reserved for the wealthy, yet now an essential service for all economic classes. If there is no dry cleaner, there is at least a laudromat. Work formerly performed by only women has become work performed by everyone.

Also in that corner retail outlet will be a copy shop, a 1 hour photo store, the corner mail box franchise or a box store. And not too far down the street can be found the public storage warehouse facility where we now pack away all our idled merchandise: roughly 7 to 10 square feet of “stuff” for every man, woman and child in this nation.

Women used to be the care-givers: eldercare, nursing, and the whole range of healthcare support service professionals as well as the office “assist-ant” or secretary. Technology has migrated most of the office assist-ant functions back to the individual worker or boss. If women are no longer in those professions, today, it is because they found some higher bid for the value of their time, with a commensurate reduction in the physical risks associated with the job. Today, nurses are being trained, educated, certified and then imported from overseas. Alternative life-style real estate options with support services are being created: senior residence centers, transitional medical facilities and a wide variety of retirement housing options.

Alvin Toffler, in his book, Future Shock, warned that the rate of change was increasing exponentially in our lives. One of the most dramatic pieces of evidence that “too much change too fast” can be overwhelming is when we realize that Toffler’s book is now almost 30 years old (written in 1970). Women have been at the epicenter of a significant portion of the tectonic shifts taking place over the past three decades. Women have been inundated with change in information, communication, education, careers, business and home life.

The differences between what was and what is are huge, if you stop to examine your mother’s life and the life experienced by the typical female today. The same is true of fathers and sons, no doubt, but there has been much more continuity for men: a football game today is basically the same game that their father watched.

Women have been among the primary beneficiaries of that dramatic escalation of differences. As Toffler suggested, the greatest challenge facing economic actors would be the assimilation of the change: learning how to effectively incorporate differences arising over time into one’s daily life.

Some women have struggled more than others with the rapid, sometimes frenetic, rate of change. Others have embraced it. Some have been taken for a whiplash ride while others have sailed on, well-balanced, on their own boards and under their own control.

Women who opt-out in several possible stages of their lives are examples of those who struggle with the pace of change. Women who retire early, who leave corporate or work experience with no thought to continue producing, but rather just to rest; women who seek the slower pace of part-time work or who prefer the control of a home-schooling environment are simply those who are making one set of economic choices. Too often, we over-judge them and fail to acknowledge the legitimacy of their “different” decision-making. They represent not the whole economic spectrum of choices among women in the marketplace, but they do represent a quantifiable and analyzable sub-sector with measurable consequences to their choices. They are not Everywoman, as the mainstream media would wish us to believe. They are one type of buyer in the marketplace.

Other women embrace change: some more effectively than others. Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears ride change hell-bent for the effect. There are many women who thrive on the effect or appearance they create in the marketplace. Again, such women might represent a small quantifiable percentage of the whole, but the noise and splash created by their appearance is far larger than their actual numbers would indicate.

What share of the total marketplace is represented by women who have learned how to accommodate the rapid pace of change in our lives today? How many women successfully sail their own ship across these stormy seas? How many women somehow manage to traverse all the bumps and obstacles of contemporary life and how do they keep their balance at such speeds?

In the past four decades, life has changed dramatically and has become exponentially better for women, especially. The value we place on the contribution women make to society has never been as high.

Do we segment “the female marketplace” with as much precision and understanding as we do others: car buyers? Stocks vs. bond-buyers? Or do we try to lump all women together in one huge amorphous, meaningless agglomeration of sisterhood? Do women today know the value they have created, over the past forty years? Do we quantify and evaluate the incremental wealth we have added to all our lives by the individual, cumulative decisions women have made to move out of one highly dependent economic position (the home) and to go contract with our neighbor’s family and our community, thereby creating new economic value that benefits all of our lives today.

Without a doubt, there also have been costs associated with these huge changes. But, overall, our ability to solve contemporary problems and our willingness to do so both have been enhanced by those women who chose to embrace the rapid pace of change rather than hide from it and let it change them.

Today we see a highly differentiated market of female economic actors, spanning a gigantic spectrum of behaviors and choices. Yet, we still try to tamp all women back into the easy-to-manage (and love) image of Mom, Apple Pie, and the Girl Back Home – or Hannah Montana or Paris Hilton or our Martha-Oprah-Suzie media imprint. When Katie Couric does not fit that media mold, we keep trying to pound her down until she fits back into the image that we believe will “sell” or “make us feel good.”

There are huge quantitative differences among women today because, one by one, they stepped out of the house, out of the stereotypes and out of the image-makers’ mold. They also stepped out and beyond the reach of the feminist movement, which was simply a temporary way-station along the way to independent economic choices. We no longer need “a movement” – individual women today constitute the primary source of progress.

So, why don’t we stop trying to make all women the same -– why not survey, quantify, document, analyze, measure and differential among women, as independent economic actors, just as we would any other segment of the marketplace: housing, financial investment options, consumer choices or food preferences? Maybe it is time we began to understand the quantifiable economic differences that exist among women in today’s marketplace.