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When I began writing about personal finance, it was to reach other women like me: college-educated young professionals, working their first Real Person jobs, and befuddled by how their biweekly paychecks disappeared from their checking accounts every month like water evaporating in the sun\u2014effortlessly.<\/p>\n
Every once in a while, I\u2019d get a message like this: \u201cDo you have any advice for people who don\u2019t make very much?\u201d <\/p>\n
The reasons<\/em> the senders offered for their financial strain varied: One woman had just gotten divorced and her husband had controlled the money; another worked in a low-wage, dead-end job; someone else was a single mother struggling to afford daycare, while a fourth had tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills from an unexpected diagnosis. Similar themes emerged over time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n My 50\/30\/20 budgeting models and corporate ladder-climbing strategies were useless to these women, and each one left a tiny, indelible crack in my understanding of \u201cfinancial literacy\u201d as the key to equality for women. <\/p>\n There were plenty of readers who were ready to take the bull by the horns, make informed choices, and get rich, baby! But there was an equally large contingent for whom the advice to stop going out to eat in order to invest more didn\u2019t make any sense, because they hadn\u2019t been inside a restaurant in months<\/em>.<\/p>\n The data indicates this latter group might actually be larger than the former, as women are overrepresented in low-wage labor: Women make up less than half<\/span><\/a> of the total workforce, but represent nearly 60% of all low-wage workers, earning under $11 per hour on average. <\/p>\n And on the whole, we know a woman\u2019s income tends to deteriorate as she ages<\/span><\/a>: The gender wage gap is largest from ages 45 to 54; in that age group, the median US male pulls down $72,228 each year while the median US female earns $57,096.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For our purposes today, I\u2019m defining \u201cfeminism\u201d as work that advances the equality of the sexes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s something I\u2019ve been chewing on a lot in recent months as I work on my upcoming book<\/span><\/a>, Rise of the Rich Girls<\/em>, and, more broadly, exist in this tricky online space<\/span><\/a> where there\u2019s a temptation to recast every<\/em> financial decision a woman makes as \u201cfeminist,\u201d so long as it beefs up her bottom line. <\/p>\n I say this is \u201ctricky\u201d because, historically speaking, promoting financial equality for women is<\/em> a pretty progressive thing (it hasn\u2019t even been 50 years<\/span><\/a> since Congress ruled it was illegal for creditors to discriminate based on sex or marital status!). <\/p>\n But the question opens a few different cans of prickly worms (ew, what an image), because if a woman\u2014any woman!\u2014getting her bag immediately<\/em> qualifies as an act of feminist empowerment, then is anything she had to do<\/em> to get that money automatically grandfathered in? (See also: erstwhile Girlboss Elizabeth Holmes.) Is Margot Robbie making $50 million off the Barbie<\/em> movie this summer a win for the pink team, or is it\u2026just a win for Margot Robbie? <\/p>\n For the record, this approach has a near-100% success rate on me. Rebrand something as a feminist issue, and this is me:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Credit: Rick & Morty<\/p><\/div>\n We ride at dawn, girlies! <\/p>\n The problem is, it\u2019s remarkably easy to wander down the well-worn path of positioning solutions that might improve your personal situation<\/em> as somehow intrinsically radical on behalf of Women Everywhere\u2122<\/em><\/strong>, and my mixed feelings about this misapplication of the transitive property (as someone who creates personal finance content for women) have only grown more mystifying as my platform has grown.<\/p>\n To be clear, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything wrong<\/em> with focusing on individual solutions\u2014after all, taking matters into your own capable hands is often necessary to make any progress at all. And as culture critic Jessica DeFino wryly noted in our episode<\/span><\/a> a few weeks ago, \u201cYes, systems are to blame, but\u2026we\u2019re individuals that exist within those systems, and you know, paradox\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Still, ennobling personal advancement (the \u201climitlessly seductive sales pitch that feminism means, first and foremost, the public demonstration of getting yours,\u201d as Jia Tolentino wrote in Trick Mirror<\/em><\/span><\/a>) is a bossbabe magic trick that\u2019s always struck me as a little too<\/em> convenient. You\u2019re telling me that making <\/em>myself fabulously rich is also good for women everywhere? Incredible! My duty to the sisterhood has been fulfilled.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Why is this transubstantiation of individual wealth accumulation into high-minded political resistance so appealing? (Again, Tolentino might have our answer: \u201cA politics around getting and spending money is sexier than a politics built around politics.\u201d) <\/p>\n And why can\u2019t we just let effective individual tactics that work for some<\/em> women be imperfect solutions in an imperfect world? Is it because we believe, on some level, that if enough individual ships rise up, the tide will rise beneath it? (I think we all probably know enough about that metaphor to realize that\u2019s not how it works.)<\/p>\n This feels especially relevant amidst the magenta gingham press coverage of \u201cBarbie Girl Summer\u201d and countless headlines about how Beyonc\u00e9, Taylor Swift, and Barbie<\/em> are \u201csinglehandedly saving the economy<\/span><\/a>\u201d or how \u201cwomen own this summer<\/span><\/a>.\u201d But which<\/em> women? We should specify: These<\/em> women (and the people<\/a> who work for them). <\/p>\n Henah and I both saw Barbie<\/em>. I scream-cried through the Eras Tour; Henah worshiped at the altar of Queen Bey. Still, I can\u2019t forget: I likely have a lot more in common with the average man<\/em> than I do with Taylor Swift. Socioeconomic status is, in some ways, a more meaningful stratification tool than gender when you\u2019re talking about a woman with billions of dollars<\/em>, and it\u2019s been interesting to observe the way the media has quickly applied the economic uber-dominance of three powerful women (Swift, Knowles, and Robbie) like a sparkly weighted blanket over the economic circumstances of \u201cwomen\u201d as a whole.<\/p>\n Calling this out explicitly feels true but annoying; I wish I could earnestly, uncomplicatedly celebrate the fact that the three biggest entertainers in the world right now are women as though it\u2019s a big, feminist victory\u2014but it mostly just feels like a big capitalist victory (which is fun, because pink!<\/em>, but it\u2019s a \u201cwin for women\u201d in a game that most women aren\u2019t playing).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Still, the danger of consistently reinforcing the tenuous connection between the specific tactics often framed as ways to \u201cfight back\u201d (salary negotiation techniques, financial literacy, selling out a 50-stop stadium tour, etc.) and the larger issues they purport to meaningfully improve or fix (a persistent disparity in income and wealth by gender, women trapped in the low-wage cycle, etc.) is that it suggests a causal relationship where one probably doesn\u2019t exist, and cuts the conversation off at the knees right as it\u2019s starting to go somewhere. <\/p>\n It\u2019s this phenomenon that morphs giving women advice about, say, how to negotiate more persuasively, into the implicit, perhaps inadvertent suggestion that women not negotiating hard enough<\/em> is the reason<\/span><\/a> the gender pay gap exists in the first place.<\/p>\n While undoubtedly useful and important for an individual woman, the solution offered\u2014i.e., negotiation advice\u2014isn\u2019t reflective of why<\/em> she\u2019s statistically likely to earn less over her career, nor is it likely to directly impact the sociocultural norms that thrust women into the false \u201ccareer vs. family\u201d dichotomy that men don\u2019t face. <\/p>\n (I remember listening to a panel in college where an audience member directed a question about \u201cwork-life balance as a mother\u201d to the only female executive speaking. The exec rejected the premise of the question and instead asked, in not so many words, \u201cwhy the male executives on the panel weren\u2019t being asked how they balanced their careers with fatherhood.\u201d It was metal as hell. My world tilted ever so slightly on its axis that day, my ears attuned to the high-pitched frequency of sexist dog whistles.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Contrast that example with a broader discussion of something like universal child care and the impact it would likely have on the gender wage gap for all<\/em> mothers; the data<\/span><\/a> is clear that statistically, even women who work full-time (including the breadwinning ones<\/span><\/a>!) bear the brunt of unpaid and underpaid caretaking work. While it\u2019s unlikely that universal childcare is a silver bullet (and we\u2019ll explore why in this week\u2019s upcoming episode), we know that industrialized countries<\/span><\/a> that offer this benefit (or even attempt to) tend to have smaller gender wage gaps. <\/p>\n The advice to negotiate is clean: a series of steps to follow, phrases to memorize, and the immediate gratification of a pay bump. <\/p>\n Conversely, reckoning with the structure of family and work is nebulous, and makes no such promises of speedy personal enrichment. Whether or not the US ever gets universal childcare is, for most of us, a reality that\u2019s so far outside the realm of our control so as to feel irrelevant. <\/p>\n It\u2019s no wonder we tend to prefer the individual tactics\u2014the \u201cnegotiation advice\u201d of it all\u2014in the personal finance world (and with good reason; my telling you to fight for universal childcare isn\u2019t going to make your take-home pay stretch to cover your current<\/em> childcare bills any more easily in the meantime!). The tactics matter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I keep circling this core truth: Financial literacy might help you overcome some of these obstacles in your own life, but a lack of financial literacy is not the reason you\u2019re statistically most likely, as a woman, to experience those wage and wealth gaps in the first place<\/strong>.<\/p>\n >
\n \u201c<\/span>There was a large contingent [of women] for whom the advice to stop going out to eat in order to invest more didn\u2019t make any sense, because they hadn\u2019t been inside a restaurant in months.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n\n
\n\nSo I started asking myself: Is an individual woman\u2019s accumulation of wealth an innately \u201cfeminist\u201d act?<\/h2>\n
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\n \u201c<\/span>It\u2019s remarkably easy to wander down the well-worn path of positioning solutions that might improve your personal situation as somehow intrinsically radical on behalf of Women Everywhere\u2122.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n\n
\n\nThe danger of reverse causality<\/h2>\n
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\n \u201c<\/span>It\u2019s this phenomenon that morphs giving women advice about, say, how to negotiate more persuasively, into the implicit, perhaps inadvertent suggestion that women not negotiating hard enough is the reason the gender pay gap exists in the first place.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n\n
\n\nBut a lack of financial literacy isn\u2019t the root cause of these issues, which means more of it won\u2019t be the solution<\/h2>\n