Every time I read anything about finances and women, I am reminded of a friend of a friend who once stated on her social media accounts her gratitude for her husband supporting her and the children, including paying her half of the childcare, while she was very ill.
And of another, who let her husband set up her pension – in such a way, it turned out, that it actually legally ended up with him when they divorced.
And of another, who from the beginning of their relationship paid the daily bills while her partner paid the rent and then the mortgage and didn’t recalculate the sums for years after that, and therefore did not realise that the division was no longer equitable, nor that he was stashing all that he saved in various investments, not all of which she was able to discover when – you’ll never guess how this ends – it came time to divorce.
I could go on, but the point is made: money is important, the treatment of money in a relationship splits insanely often in one sex’s favour, and the more women can do to start rejecting embedded notions around who it belongs to, who has the right to it, who should control it, the better off – in every single sense – we would be.
(I cannot leave this intro without purging myself of just a few specifics: your husband supporting you and the children you have had together while you are so ill you cannot work does not count as a favour. It counts as foundational, baseline stuff. If he insists that you show gratitude, if he marks it as an emotional debit in the marital ledger, let alone if he asks at any point that you actually pay him back – please leave. This is not a good husband or person. Right, now I’ve got that off my chest: onward.)
Even what seem like minor imbalances here and there between a couple widen over time. Compound interest is a blessing; compound inequalities take a terrible toll. The charity Pregnant Then Screwed has just launched the “Thanks for Your Service” campaign to draw attention to the gender gap in pensions.
Women’s investment pots here average about 33 per cent less than men overall, and nearer 50 per cent amongst – deeply unhelpfully – older groups. The difference is due mostly to the very simple reason that women take more career breaks – to have babies (with the fertility window coinciding in many professional careers with the peak time for maximising your earning potential), to look after family members (especially ageing parents, which often takes away a last chance to make up the baby-ground lost) and wave goodbye to earnings and pension contributions, and growth, in the process.
The older I get (and yes, my pension IS pretty much non-existent, thank you for asking! But my husband’s is even smaller so hurrah for this feminist win), the more I feel that economic feminism is the only place to start. Amassing money and economic power for women is where we need to concentrate our feminist efforts. Because without that – nada. There can be no practical freedom gained, no real choices to be made without money, in the end. By all means, strive for a utopia in which one day this will no longer be true and we will all trade time and skills, goods and services as seamlessly as we now do fungible currencies, but until then – until then?
Well, until then, let’s use the one advantage financial inequity offers over all the other kinds: its relative visibility. Figures are tangible. Differential pay rates, for example, are way easier to prove than any other form of bias.
You can also put a monetary value on the domestic services you provide. You don’t actually have to charge it – just concretise it, perhaps for a partner who believes you stay at home all day gazing smilingly at your infant while peeling yourself grape on the chaise longue. What would you have to pay a cleaner, a laundry, a cook, a PA, a childminder? And don’t forget to add employer pension contributions on top. It helps to know your worth in all kinds of ways. And then to tell anyone who benefits from it.
A wonderful book called Femonomics by Corinne Low came out last year and I have given it to every one of my female friends since. Amidst setting out many wider, systemic changes needed in society (maximum work opportunities, for example, don’t HAVE to coincide with fertility windows – that’s literally a manmade timetable) Low advises envisaging what you want in a partner as if he or she were the CEO in a proposed joint business venture – to which long-term and family life is far more akin – rather than as a romantic idol. Even those of us who are well into family life can benefit from this little thought experiment.
Money is big. Money is nearly everything. That’s why most people don’t want to share it and many men in relationships don’t like to see it as anything but theirs. They need to be disabused of this notion as soon as possible, and women need to be corrected from the other direction.
Don’t feel bad about it. The saying is not, actually, “money is the root of all evil”, the saying is “the love of money is the root of all evil”. Money is great. Get yours. Then ringfence, keep and invest it. Because almost certainly no one else is going to do it for you.