A Blog Dedicated to Discussing Women in Finance

A Cultural Analysis of Gender Bias In Finance

Wages

Over the years, women have gained and lost rights in the fight for gender equality. One of the biggest talking points when people think of women’s rights in relation to finance is the gender pay gap. As of 2023, women statistically make less money than men in wages, with a ratio of 82:100. In 2022 alone, women made, on average, about 17% less money than men. Among the lowest-paid workers are women of color, making only about 50-60 percent of the money made by white men (it should be mentioned that said white men are non-Hispanic)(1). Due to this, over long-term careers, women stand to lose hundreds of thousands to even millions of dollars compared to men. But the pay gap isn’t the only issue women face in personal finance.

Financial Literacy

Wages aren’t the only place we’re seeing a financial gap between men and women. On top of that, there is also a gap in financial literacy. Financial literacy allows one to know how to make informed decisions about money, and it’s the most important thing to being able to maintain one’s quality of life and prevent or prepare for unexpected expenses that one may otherwise be unable to cover. While Americans in general are on the lower end of the financial literacy spectrum, women are at a significant disadvantage compared to men, regardless of education, marital status, or income. This is especially important for women due to a longer average life span, and a tendency to retire sooner. These things mean that women have to plan for a longer retirement than men on average, and many don’t know how, leading to major financial problems and debt later in life, which, if unresolved before death, get passed on to living relatives and/or spouses. Not only is financial literacy important for women for practical reasons, but there is a much simpler reason: WOMEN DESERVE ECONOMIC EQUALITY!! WOMEN HAVE A RIGHT TO REPRESENTATION IN THE ECONOMY!!! So why is it so difficult? Well, because the problem with gender bias in general isn’t just statistical. It’s social.

Society At Large

Caretakers

The societal expectations placed on women from birth severely affect their potential in the financial world. It’s important that women break free from these expectations, and doing so can help teach the world that these expectations never made sense in the first place. For example, many people of younger generations have this belief that they are their parents’ retirement plan—that is, they’re responsible for taking care of and supporting their parents during retirement. Not only should this not be true, as it places an unnecessary financial burden on the kid, as well as being an awful plan due to unforeseen emergencies putting all involved at risk, but even more so, it is almost always the daughters that are expected to take care of elders, as women socially are seen as caregivers. To add to this idea, when women tell male dates that they do not want children, it is extremely common for said male to try to coerce or convince them to have children, completely disregarding that having children is a major financial burden and liability that someone may not be financially prepared for (and disregarding that women have the right to bodily autonomy and coercion is a form of force!!! (also why so many men who coerce/convince a girl to have sex with them don’t want to believe that that makes them a rapist🙄)) all because “a woman’s purpose in life is to get married and have kids because they’re natural caretakers.” 😬 …yeah…

Domestic Labor

Personal finance influencer Delyanne Barros (@DelyanneMoney on twt, @delyannethemoneycoach on IG) even briefly accounts one of her experiences with societal expectations for women from men….

Overworked, Underpaid--The Confidence Gap

Women who do work as housekeepers (independently contracted, most often) also tend to undersell themselves, their time, and their labor due to the idea that cleaning is simply a job or responsibility every woman has, and the idea that a woman’s labor is worth next to nothing because it is “natural”. And women underselling themselves with prices isn’t some one-off thing. In 2014, Tara Mohr with Harvard Business Review published an article in which she cites an internal report from Hewlett Packard as concluding that “Men are confident about their ability at 60%, but women don’t feel confident until they’ve checked off each item on the list”(2). Because of this, most women are not only overworked, but also underpaid.

Patriarchy, Capitalism, Relationships, And The Economy

The biggest thing holding women back financially is the patriarchal society we live in, whose oppressive system we are forced to take part in. A lot of this shows up in heteronormative relationships (those between a cisgender man and a cisgender woman), especially after marriage. So, so many people are in relationships or married to each other just to have someone to split the bills with them, as it’s nearly impossible to survive, let alone thrive, in our economy with only a single source of income. Most people need a two-income household just to afford housing, let alone other bills and expenses associated with staying alive in the US. Many have to go to work at jobs they hate simply to get even the bare minimum of health insurance, because even though health insurance is legally required in the US, it’s too expensive for most people to afford without it being provided through employers. On top of that, most health insurance plans, especially those provided at the barely-affordable “lowest” prices, don’t cover important medical care and procedures that are expensive but can be life-saving.

Even though, in most monogamous relationships and marriages now, both partners are working (because they have to), we continue to see double standards in most men for what they expect from their girlfriends and wives, with many of them detailing things they received from their mothers growing up. You see, this double standard can be found in many households across the country, where you will find girls taught and expected to cook, clean, and do their own laundry while still in their single digits, whereas sons are raised with fewer expectations, their mothers continuing to cook their meals, clean the house, and do their laundry for them up until the son moves out, and sometimes even after that. Many mothers with both sons and daughters also tend to neglect their daughters and place all the attention on their sons.

The following is a breakup text a TikTok user received from her (now ex) boyfriend and posted to reveal how he and too many men view women:

Circling back around to domestic labor, women are expected to do all the work to maintain a household, while men feel entitled todoing nothing outside of their paid job. It’s not worth it to be in a two-income household if you’re expected to take on two people’s worth of unpaid domestic labor. In a heteronormative relationship, women’s labor doubles while men’s labor is halved. When men encourage an “equal partnership” with paying bills and expenses but not for unpaid labor within the home, it’s not an equal partnership, it’s the exploitation of women’s liberation efforts to benefit the patriarchal standards of society. Many men are also so entitled that they demand to be considered head of the household even when their female partner brings in more money, pays the bills and expenses, and does all the unpaid labor within the household.

When women started a humorous trend called “girl math” to describe the ways that women tend to break down everything from spending to social situations and more, men jumped in, using the phrase “girl math” to list their misogynistic ideas of what women are like, especially feminists. Here are a few clapbacks from women, who responded by explaining “boy math,” shedding light on male entitlement:

Society also treats women as if they’ve reached the end of a meaningful life at age 40, putting more pressure on women that they are running out of time or have peaked at a young age and will only decline from there. Women are also criticized and considered “difficult” or “hopeless” for showing traits that men are socially and systemically praised and rewarded for.

A short video from Cyzor explaining how men also suffer from the patriarchy.

So, there you have it. A summary of how women are directly facing sexism, and how it affects their place in the financial world.

Haan, Katherine (February 27, 2023). "Gender Pay Gap Statistics in 2023". Forbes Advisor. Forbes. Retrieved December 7, 2023 

A Cultural Analysis of Gender Bias In Finance

Wages

Over the years, women have gained and lost rights in the fight for gender equality. One of the biggest talking points when people think of women’s rights in relation to finance is the gender pay gap. As of 2023, women statistically make less money than men in wages, with a ratio of 82:100. In 2022 alone, women made, on average, about 17% less money than men. Among the lowest-paid workers are women of color, making only about 50-60 percent of the money made by white men (it should be mentioned that said white men are non-Hispanic)(1). Due to this, over long-term careers, women stand to lose hundreds of thousands to even millions of dollars compared to men. But the pay gap isn’t the only issue women face in personal finance.

Financial Literacy

Wages aren’t the only place we’re seeing a financial gap between men and women. On top of that, there is also a gap in financial literacy. Financial literacy allows one to know how to make informed decisions about money, and it’s the most important thing to being able to maintain one’s quality of life and prevent or prepare for unexpected expenses that one may otherwise be unable to cover. While Americans in general are on the lower end of the financial literacy spectrum, women are at a significant disadvantage compared to men, regardless of education, marital status, or income. This is especially important for women due to a longer average life span, and a tendency to retire sooner. These things mean that women have to plan for a longer retirement than men on average, and many don’t know how, leading to major financial problems and debt later in life, which, if unresolved before death, get passed on to living relatives and/or spouses. Not only is financial literacy important for women for practical reasons, but there is a much simpler reason: WOMEN DESERVE ECONOMIC EQUALITY!! WOMEN HAVE A RIGHT TO REPRESENTATION IN THE ECONOMY!!! So why is it so difficult? Well, because the problem with gender bias in general isn’t just statistical. It’s social.

Society At Large

Caretakers

The societal expectations placed on women from birth severely affect their potential in the financial world. It’s important that women break free from these expectations, and doing so can help teach the world that these expectations never made sense in the first place. For example, many people of younger generations have this belief that they are their parents’ retirement plan—that is, they’re responsible for taking care of and supporting their parents during retirement. Not only should this not be true, as it places an unnecessary financial burden on the kid, as well as being an awful plan due to unforeseen emergencies putting all involved at risk, but even more so, it is almost always the daughters that are expected to take care of elders, as women socially are seen as caregivers. To add to this idea, when women tell male dates that they do not want children, it is extremely common for said male to try to coerce or convince them to have children, completely disregarding that having children is a major financial burden and liability that someone may not be financially prepared for (and disregarding that women have the right to bodily autonomy and coercion is a form of force!!! (also why so many men who coerce/convince a girl to have sex with them don’t want to believe that that makes them a rapist🙄)) all because “a woman’s purpose in life is to get married and have kids because they’re natural caretakers.” 😬 …yeah…

Domestic Labor

Personal finance influencer Delyanne Barros (@DelyanneMoney on twt, @delyannethemoneycoach on IG) even briefly accounts one of her experiences with societal expectations for women from men….

Overworked, Underpaid--The Confidence Gap

Women who do work as housekeepers (independently contracted, most often) also tend to undersell themselves, their time, and their labor due to the idea that cleaning is simply a job or responsibility every woman has, and the idea that a woman’s labor is worth next to nothing because it is “natural”. And women underselling themselves with prices isn’t some one-off thing. In 2014, Tara Mohr with Harvard Business Review published an article in which she cites an internal report from Hewlett Packard as concluding that “Men are confident about their ability at 60%, but women don’t feel confident until they’ve checked off each item on the list”(2). Because of this, most women are not only overworked, but also underpaid.

Patriarchy, Capitalism, Relationships, And The Economy

The biggest thing holding women back financially is the patriarchal society we live in, whose oppressive system we are forced to take part in. A lot of this shows up in heteronormative relationships (those between a cisgender man and a cisgender woman), especially after marriage. So, so many people are in relationships or married to each other just to have someone to split the bills with them, as it’s nearly impossible to survive, let alone thrive, in our economy with only a single source of income. Most people need a two-income household just to afford housing, let alone other bills and expenses associated with staying alive in the US. Many have to go to work at jobs they hate simply to get even the bare minimum of health insurance, because even though health insurance is legally required in the US, it’s too expensive for most people to afford without it being provided through employers. On top of that, most health insurance plans, especially those provided at the barely-affordable “lowest” prices, don’t cover important medical care and procedures that are expensive but can be life-saving.

Even though, in most monogamous relationships and marriages now, both partners are working (because they have to), we continue to see double standards in most men for what they expect from their girlfriends and wives, with many of them detailing things they received from their mothers growing up. You see, this double standard can be found in many households across the country, where you will find girls taught and expected to cook, clean, and do their own laundry while still in their single digits, whereas sons are raised with fewer expectations, their mothers continuing to cook their meals, clean the house, and do their laundry for them up until the son moves out, and sometimes even after that. Many mothers with both sons and daughters also tend to neglect their daughters and place all the attention on their sons.

The following is a breakup text a TikTok user received from her (now ex) boyfriend and posted to reveal how he and too many men view women:

Circling back around to domestic labor, women are expected to do all the work to maintain a household, while men feel entitled todoing nothing outside of their paid job. It’s not worth it to be in a two-income household if you’re expected to take on two people’s worth of unpaid domestic labor. In a heteronormative relationship, women’s labor doubles while men’s labor is halved. When men encourage an “equal partnership” with paying bills and expenses but not for unpaid labor within the home, it’s not an equal partnership, it’s the exploitation of women’s liberation efforts to benefit the patriarchal standards of society. Many men are also so entitled that they demand to be considered head of the household even when their female partner brings in more money, pays the bills and expenses, and does all the unpaid labor within the household.

When women started a humorous trend called “girl math” to describe the ways that women tend to break down everything from spending to social situations and more, men jumped in, using the phrase “girl math” to list their misogynistic ideas of what women are like, especially feminists. Here are a few clapbacks from women, who responded by explaining “boy math,” shedding light on male entitlement:

Society also treats women as if they’ve reached the end of a meaningful life at age 40, putting more pressure on women that they are running out of time or have peaked at a young age and will only decline from there. Women are also criticized and considered “difficult” or “hopeless” for showing traits that men are socially and systemically praised and rewarded for.

A short video from Cyzor explaining how men also suffer from the patriarchy.

So, there you have it. A summary of how women are directly facing sexism, and how it affects their place in the financial world.

Haan, Katherine (February 27, 2023). "Gender Pay Gap Statistics in 2023". Forbes Advisor. Forbes. Retrieved December 7, 2023 

A Cultural Analysis of Gender Bias In Finance

Wages

Over the years, women have gained and lost rights in the fight for gender equality. One of the biggest talking points when people think of women’s rights in relation to finance is the gender pay gap. As of 2023, women statistically make less money than men in wages, with a ratio of 82:100. In 2022 alone, women made, on average, about 17% less money than men. Among the lowest-paid workers are women of color, making only about 50-60 percent of the money made by white men (it should be mentioned that said white men are non-Hispanic)(1). Due to this, over long-term careers, women stand to lose hundreds of thousands to even millions of dollars compared to men. But the pay gap isn’t the only issue women face in personal finance.

Financial Literacy

Wages aren’t the only place we’re seeing a financial gap between men and women. On top of that, there is also a gap in financial literacy. Financial literacy allows one to know how to make informed decisions about money, and it’s the most important thing to being able to maintain one’s quality of life and prevent or prepare for unexpected expenses that one may otherwise be unable to cover. While Americans in general are on the lower end of the financial literacy spectrum, women are at a significant disadvantage compared to men, regardless of education, marital status, or income. This is especially important for women due to a longer average life span, and a tendency to retire sooner. These things mean that women have to plan for a longer retirement than men on average, and many don’t know how, leading to major financial problems and debt later in life, which, if unresolved before death, get passed on to living relatives and/or spouses. Not only is financial literacy important for women for practical reasons, but there is a much simpler reason: WOMEN DESERVE ECONOMIC EQUALITY!! WOMEN HAVE A RIGHT TO REPRESENTATION IN THE ECONOMY!!! So why is it so difficult? Well, because the problem with gender bias in general isn’t just statistical. It’s social.

Society At Large

Caretakers

The societal expectations placed on women from birth severely affect their potential in the financial world. It’s important that women break free from these expectations, and doing so can help teach the world that these expectations never made sense in the first place. For example, many people of younger generations have this belief that they are their parents’ retirement plan—that is, they’re responsible for taking care of and supporting their parents during retirement. Not only should this not be true, as it places an unnecessary financial burden on the kid, as well as being an awful plan due to unforeseen emergencies putting all involved at risk, but even more so, it is almost always the daughters that are expected to take care of elders, as women socially are seen as caregivers. To add to this idea, when women tell male dates that they do not want children, it is extremely common for said male to try to coerce or convince them to have children, completely disregarding that having children is a major financial burden and liability that someone may not be financially prepared for (and disregarding that women have the right to bodily autonomy and coercion is a form of force!!! (also why so many men who coerce/convince a girl to have sex with them don’t want to believe that that makes them a rapist🙄)) all because “a woman’s purpose in life is to get married and have kids because they’re natural caretakers.” 😬 …yeah…

Domestic Labor

Personal finance influencer Delyanne Barros (@DelyanneMoney on twt, @delyannethemoneycoach on IG) even briefly accounts one of her experiences with societal expectations for women from men….

Overworked, Underpaid--The Confidence Gap

Women who do work as housekeepers (independently contracted, most often) also tend to undersell themselves, their time, and their labor due to the idea that cleaning is simply a job or responsibility every woman has, and the idea that a woman’s labor is worth next to nothing because it is “natural”. And women underselling themselves with prices isn’t some one-off thing. In 2014, Tara Mohr with Harvard Business Review published an article in which she cites an internal report from Hewlett Packard as concluding that “Men are confident about their ability at 60%, but women don’t feel confident until they’ve checked off each item on the list”(2). Because of this, most women are not only overworked, but also underpaid.

Patriarchy, Capitalism, Relationships, And The Economy

The biggest thing holding women back financially is the patriarchal society we live in, whose oppressive system we are forced to take part in. A lot of this shows up in heteronormative relationships (those between a cisgender man and a cisgender woman), especially after marriage. So, so many people are in relationships or married to each other just to have someone to split the bills with them, as it’s nearly impossible to survive, let alone thrive, in our economy with only a single source of income. Most people need a two-income household just to afford housing, let alone other bills and expenses associated with staying alive in the US. Many have to go to work at jobs they hate simply to get even the bare minimum of health insurance, because even though health insurance is legally required in the US, it’s too expensive for most people to afford without it being provided through employers. On top of that, most health insurance plans, especially those provided at the barely-affordable “lowest” prices, don’t cover important medical care and procedures that are expensive but can be life-saving.

Even though, in most monogamous relationships and marriages now, both partners are working (because they have to), we continue to see double standards in most men for what they expect from their girlfriends and wives, with many of them detailing things they received from their mothers growing up. You see, this double standard can be found in many households across the country, where you will find girls taught and expected to cook, clean, and do their own laundry while still in their single digits, whereas sons are raised with fewer expectations, their mothers continuing to cook their meals, clean the house, and do their laundry for them up until the son moves out, and sometimes even after that. Many mothers with both sons and daughters also tend to neglect their daughters and place all the attention on their sons.

The following is a breakup text a TikTok user received from her (now ex) boyfriend and posted to reveal how he and too many men view women:

Circling back around to domestic labor, women are expected to do all the work to maintain a household, while men feel entitled todoing nothing outside of their paid job. It’s not worth it to be in a two-income household if you’re expected to take on two people’s worth of unpaid domestic labor. In a heteronormative relationship, women’s labor doubles while men’s labor is halved. When men encourage an “equal partnership” with paying bills and expenses but not for unpaid labor within the home, it’s not an equal partnership, it’s the exploitation of women’s liberation efforts to benefit the patriarchal standards of society. Many men are also so entitled that they demand to be considered head of the household even when their female partner brings in more money, pays the bills and expenses, and does all the unpaid labor within the household.

When women started a humorous trend called “girl math” to describe the ways that women tend to break down everything from spending to social situations and more, men jumped in, using the phrase “girl math” to list their misogynistic ideas of what women are like, especially feminists. Here are a few clapbacks from women, who responded by explaining “boy math,” shedding light on male entitlement:

Society also treats women as if they’ve reached the end of a meaningful life at age 40, putting more pressure on women that they are running out of time or have peaked at a young age and will only decline from there. Women are also criticized and considered “difficult” or “hopeless” for showing traits that men are socially and systemically praised and rewarded for.

A short video from Cyzor explaining how men also suffer from the patriarchy.

So, there you have it. A summary of how women are directly facing sexism, and how it affects their place in the financial world.

Haan, Katherine (February 27, 2023). "Gender Pay Gap Statistics in 2023". Forbes Advisor. Forbes. Retrieved December 7, 2023 

Unfortunately, this question is left off of many lists of job interview questions and answer examples.

But it’s extremely important and the wrong answer here can cost us thousands of dollars in the negotiation later on.

Stand our ground and tell them we don’t have a number in mind yet or aren’t sure.

Good answer sample:

“Right now I’m focused on finding a job that’s the right fit for my career.

Once I’ve done that, I’m willing to consider an offer you feel is fair, but I do not have a specific number in mind yet, and my priority is to find a position that’s a great fit for me.”

June Jordan, Apologies to All the People in Lebanon (originally published in Village Voice in 1982)

Started planning 2024…

my first resolutions:

Stop wasting your time 

Invest it in yourself

Build your life 

Work and overcome your shit

Stop being addicted to negative-thoughts

Build and grow yourself