Issue 59: Money making and the female brain - Part 4
Are women’s money needs different from men’s?
This is Part 4 of a four-part series on “Women and Money Management”. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the series.
Did you know that, for the better part of the 20th century, the United Kingdom had a “Marriage Bar”, that prohibited women from working as permanent employees after their marriage? Ranging from banking to the BBC, from civil services to the foreign services, the marriage bar continued in many industries in the UK till it was completely abolished in 1975.
1975! That’s how long it took to officially abolish a law that considered women’s employment an optionality, something that was dispensable as soon as they got married, so the “bread winners”, the males, had their rightful access to paid jobs.
As late as the 2000s, women have been reminded time and again, now that they are married, their money doesn’t really matter much anymore, does it?
It happened to me a decade ago, in a performance discussion of all things. “Does the bonus really matter so much to you now that you are married and have another big income in the house?”
The invisible and omnipresent marriage bar.
Social media and popular narrative don’t help the cause much. If you have been following trending social mores of the season, you would be aware of this new sensation on the block - Girl Math.
Long and short of it is that women spend extravagantly and use ridiculous accounting calculations to rationalise the spend. E.g., a woman buying an expensive dress with the justification that since she will be wearing it multiple times, the per-wear cost justifies it.
Once we walk down the path that women spend extravagantly, we start believing that women focus most on discretionary spends, ergo meaning they really don’t have essential needs to spend on. Which means, the money they earn is only a good-to-have not a must-have, so is it even that important?
It could be one of the many contributing reasons to a gender pay gap of 20% globally, a gap that is 34% in India (as per the International Labour Organization).
It is 2023, and our country pays women 34% lesser than men for the same jobs.
The Marriage Bar has simply transformed into a Women’s Cell, if you may.
What can you do, as an earning woman, you wonder.
State your worth. Never shy away from that. Just proving your worth and waiting for work to speak for yourself is very 1700s, and I suppose it wasn’t an effective strategy even then.
Compensation is related to work and not to marital status, remind people of that. Easier said than done. A simpler strategy is to not give a polite smile or acknowledgment when someone makes such a flippant remark. It is a small start, but as starts go, having one is better than not having one.
Strike a balance between your investments and expenses. Money grows, more money grows more. Your job is not to conform to a viral TikTok trend. If buying extravagant dresses makes you happy, so be it. But be sure to save some on the side, in the right instruments, so you can have your dresses and keep having ‘em more dresses too.
That brings us to the end of the “Money management” series, albeit after a long gap.
Stay tuned in for the next issue - I promise to be very regular going forward, because I seem to have tons of stuff to discuss here at Girl At Work. And, I think you will like a lot of them, my dear reader.
P. S. Views strictly personal.