Why are women different with money?

Money, Money, Money!

Sep 05, 2024

∙ Paid

Abba may have sung about it, but money isn’t often talked about, especially women and money. It feels messy and fragile and a bit ick. As I prepare to give a short talk about it next week for a business network, I’m unpacking the ick, thinking about the impact money - and in reality - my mindset around money - has had on my life. It’s taken a fair bit of work to improve my perfectionist mindset around something that is often so unpredictable and unpleasant. But I’m getting there and it helps when I coach women to see that I’m not alone in wanting to feel financially safe, without ever putting thought into assessing what financially safe actually means. And it is rarely an amount, at the end of the day.

What I’ve learned is that your mindset around money is far more important than the actual amount of money, certainly in terms of emotional stability. But for so many women, our mindset isn’t just a case of fear versus confidence… there is a lot of unknown pressure bearing down on how we relate to our financial selves.

I have two clients who on paper are worlds apart in terms of financial security, yet their mindsets are so different. It’s the mindset, however, that impacts so many other parts of their lives, more than the money itself.

There is one, who looks fairly financially stable - married, house nearly paid off, good job, pension in the back pocket and no major issues. But she is in constant fear. That fear is stopping her being able to make empowered decisions around her career and other life choices. The fear stems way back to her childhood where her scarcity mindset had formed and no matter how financially secure she has become, her mindset is in constant poverty mode.

Then I’ve another client who on paper looks a lot more vulnerable. She is a single parent who gets no support from her ex-partner, and she’s had to move back in with her mum. She has a modestly paid job and yet her mindset around money is fierce. She knows it’s tough but she also knows she can make it all work. She tackles her finances like a problem to be solved, not a threat to be intimidated by. But the very fact that she is in this situation, having to be a lioness, is part of the patriarchal problem that all women face in terms of being financially equitable.

Because, while mindset is more important than money, what can impact that mindset is the historical inequity that still impacts women today that creates a mindset gap to add to the pay gap, the pension gap, and the housework gap.

Quick history lesson

Throughout thousands of years of civilisation, women have really only had about 150 years in which to develop a mindset around money. Historically, women have held little power lest their hysterical tendencies broke the controls, and therefore little control over money, from family finances, to property ownership and wealth.

Even within our lifetimes, women had to give up work in the civil service and other professions when they got married (ending in 1973 in Ireland), couldn’t own their own home outright in their own name (until 1976), couldn’t open a bank account in the UK (until 1975). The historical legacy of women not being paid for their labour, and being low paid remains. ’Women’s work’ is still taken for granted, and that has an impact in the home and in the workplace today. Just look at the still too depressing reports that highlight that women - despite working - still do more housework and care-giving work.

I am constantly seeing women, despite us being these generations of feminist, working, educated women, realise they don’t have financial equity in their marriages. I experienced it myself when my marriage ended andI realised I’d been penalised for having the children and lost huge chunks of my pension. More of that below. This isn’t because we’re “bad with money” but that we are living in an inequitable society whereby women’s wealth, and women’s work do not have the right support.

Quick note on the difference between equality and equity. Equality means we all have equal rights and equal pay for example, but equity means we are all given the right supports to enable us to benefit from equal rights and feel the equality of pay etc. For women this means understanding our career trajectory is affected differently to men by having a family, or in a marriage where one partner spends more time to raise the kids needs to have their pension supported. It also means recognising that women still do more work in the home. That equitable society we are all working towards as we drift away from a system built for, and by, men, means that everyone has the right (and sometimes different) supports to enjoy equality.

Female poverty still is heavier than mens.

So is the emotional burden of being responsible for everyone’s happiness.

So is the physical burden of running a home.

So as we are the unique generations of women in living in a transitional era of a seismic societal shift from a patriarchal system to one that is hopefully equitable for all, it can feel messy. We’re all still working towards something that isn’t fully defined. We didn’t swap one system with another overnight… the old system needs to be dismantled brick by brick, pay rise by pay rise, promotion by promotion, child-care cover by child-care cover, housework share by housework share.

We have a sense of parity, but are nowhere near equity. Men and women certainly were and still are, socialised differently. I’ve written before about the Triad of Turmoil - people pleasing, perfectionism and imposter syndrome - that betray our thoughts with long, insidious cultural conditioning, all of which affects women in terms of asking for pay rises, charging the right fees, making sure there is financial and home-running equity in a marriage.

Money mindset.

So with that context for women in mind, let’s look at how mindset works. To put it as simply as possible, our thoughts create our emotions which influence our actions.

You hear a rustle in the grass, and you think it might be a snake, so you feel frightened and you run away. Circumstance (rustle) leads to thought (snake), leads to a feeling (fear) leads to action (flight or freeze).

Added to this, your survival brain is geared to be vigilant for worse case scenario and so your immediate thought is likely a snake and not a rabbit.

If your thought was that the rustle was caused by a fluffy little bunny, you feel all warm and fuzzy yourself and your action is likely to be to get closer.

The fun thing is…. The circumstance is the same - you hear a rustle in the grass. You can have two different thoughts (snake or rabbit) that produce two different feelings with lead to two completely different actions.

Your thoughts are just thoughts, yet often we let them totally drive our lives. Now, I’m going to add another layer on for women. Remember that Triad of Turmoil - people pleasing, perfectionism and imposter syndrome? Not only does our survival brain leap to worse case, we also have a layer of guilt / shame / judgy thoughts based on our Triad. This is why you cannot always believe the first thought in your head.

So let’s get back to money.

Regardless of the actually amount of money or financial situation, you can have a scarcity mindset, or an abundant one (abundant doesn’t mean rich, it just means you feel comfortable around and about money).

The first client I mentioned, despite having more financial security on paper, had a scarcity mindset. The second one had an abundant one even though her circumstances were different. It isn’t that she feels rich or cloaks her situation with false positivity; her mindset allows her to face the challenges with creativity and courage.

I developed a scarcity mindset because I grew up in a home where money was talked about in fear. “We can’t afford it….” was a constant refrain. Growing up in the 1970’s and 80’s I also witnessed my mum struggle for some sort of financial equality.

So faced with that early developed mindset, and the historical/ socialised legacy, I’m aware that my confidence around money needs to be monitored. It affects how I charge, how I feel my potential is to save, how I can close my gaping pension gap. So I’ve worked on getting myself to neutral at least, and in neutral, I can view the situation without fear and then ask for the advice / help I need.

But I meet so many clients who don’t even realise they have a scarcity mindset. Or that the layer of the Triad is affecting their marriage.

One of my clients is in her mid-40’s, and a perfect example of todays transitional woman in that she is educated, has a career and a family.

Her husband has a “very busy job.” She also has a career, although this is not seen as a “very busy job.” Which is weird since she’s a teacher which feels like a busy job to me. She also has another busy job, again not described in this way, but just in a taken for granted sort of way, as the mother of 4 kids and runner of the home.

When she started coaching with me, she was at the end of her tether.

Having juggled her job and family for several years which reduced her to a shadow of herself, she had to walk away (from the job, not the family). She literally couldn’t do it all (despite being told she could have it all). So she left her career to try and manage her home and family.

After two years of that she realised that without outside work, her husband and kids assumed she was responsible for everything: every cup, every dish, every chore. And to add insult to injury, she has no financial independence.

This was not about her husband keeping her barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, but about the fact that as a couple, she had no financial equity if she didn’t work, but couldn’t work because there was no home and family care equality.

So she comes to me with clumps of hair in her hands, literally split apart from one leg in each camp - patriarchy (all on her) and equity (oooh look, you can have a job too!).

This is not about her having a bad husband by the way. When she explained to him she had no financial independence he just told her it was all “their” money and she could have what she wanted. But because he put the money into the joint bank account for family funds, and she no longer had any to put in, she had to ask him for money. He just couldn’t see why that was an issue. (See history of women and money).

The work we are doing together is to help her ‘retrain’ her husband and family into how things can be spread more equitably across the family so that she can feel some sense of equality within that family. (She has decided to go back to work to garner her financial independence again and we are working on ways she can even out the financial and home equity). She’s not the first woman to bemoan this sort of situation.

I had another client who was a doctor (as was her husband) and so on paper, they look equal. But her pension is down because of time taken to have kids, and became she works part time to help raise them while they’re young, she now earns less. But on top of that, even though they put money into a joint account for family and home costs, she has less for herself because a) she works part-time and b) she ends up paying for more stuff out of her money as she does all the clothes shopping, the endless popping to shops on way home, picking up costumes and presents for parties and all the minute things that go into rising kids but which are often so unseen and unrecognised.

I could write about so many scenarios I’ve come across where women do not have financial equity in their marriages, and because of the double whammy hit on their mindset around money (history and patriarchy), they don’t have the tools to keep shifting the system one family at a time.

But the more we can understand how our mindset is impacted, the more we can work to shift it to serve us better, to be the trailblazers changing the way women and money interact, one woman at a time.

For my paid subscribers, I’m offer a free Money Mindset booklet below to help you understand what some of your thoughts are around money and how you can tackle them.

I absolutely love hearing from you, and I’d love to know how you feel about your money mindset, so please join me in the comments below (if you’re reading this in an email, please click on the link below to go through to the website to join the conversation.)

Also if you need a bit of space to think about your life, please join me on the 9th September for a 4 week challenge to learn life-long habits that will help you listen to the rage and dance in the moonlight. All the details for my Happier Habits Challenge are here.

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