Women’s income.
Financial journalist Simoney Kyriakou tells us why it’s so important for women to talk about and understand money.
Money is something of a taboo subject for many people. It’s not something considered polite to discuss around a dinner table, along with religion, politics and one’s particular proclivities. But outside of that scenario, it is something that men tend to be very good at discussing. They boast about salaries and bonuses, ask direct questions about investment portfolios, pension plans and earnings potential.
Women, on the other hand, tend not to talk about it very much at all. We hardly ever disclose details about our salaries to even our closest friends and family, let alone our colleagues — and this has in part helped to keep the gender pay gap as wide as it has been for the past 40 or so years since the Equal Pay Act in 1976. Think about it: if more women discussed their salary and bonuses as men do, we’d have perfect transparency about what our colleagues are earning, and where our companies are failing to pay women the same as their male equivalents, doing the same job, with the same or even more experience.
Sure, we might complain to our friends that we don’t have enough money, or talk about great bargain buys we’ve seen, or moan that too much tax seems to be coming out of our pay packets. But when was the last time we sat down with our female friends and discussed our income protection plans, the levels of diversification in our ISA portfolios or whether we think we have saved enough in our pension pots? I have never met a woman who is prepared to talk about her bonus or salary uplift.
Perhaps this is a throwback to the Victorian idea of what is, and what is not, considered proper behaviour for a woman to display. ‘Boasting’ (or simply telling someone about our achievements/rewards) is something we’ve been preconditioned not to do. It’s seen as part of being a Man-the-Provider thing to do, and a woman who does this is seen to be acting improperly.
I’ve often broached the subject of money with my peers and always found it surprising how little knowledge they have had about savings, investments, pensions and mortgages. This isn’t because they are financially or mathematically illiterate; quite the opposite in many cases. It’s simply because they’ve never been asked about it, and never had to think about it beyond paying their rent or mortgage, or juggling household bills.
When I get down to the finer details with them, the reasons they give for not having the time to really think about their financial futures boil down to the following:
1) I’m too busy thinking about immediate needs for myself and my family.
2) I don’t earn as much as my partner does so I don’t deal with the bills.
3) I’ll rely on my partner/property to see me through retirement.
4) I’m so busy with the children I don’t have time to think about myself.
5) I’m only working part time/in a low-paid job and have hardly any money to spare.
Recently, I sat down with a group of women as part of a study by a national organisation to find out why women don’t discuss their finances with each other, and what our own worries are.
While the full details of this are embargoed until later this month (November), the general consensus is that we just don’t feel comfortable talking about what we don’t have, and do not always know where to start when it comes to saving. Research conducted earlier this year by the aforementioned organisation revealed that 79 per cent of millennial women have never discussed money with their partners. Seventy-nine per cent!
Many of the women worked part-time or freelance. Note how women who are freelance often call themselves that — freelance — while men who do the same call themselves ‘self-employed’ or ‘entrepreneurial’. There’s a prejudice in our own language when it comes to talking about what we do; no wonder we are coy about mentioning what we earn.
These freelance/entrepreneurial/part-time women are often busy juggling unpaid work, too. By which I mean caring for elderly parents, caring for their older siblings with disabilities, or caring for their children. The money these women are saving society by taking on this role and responsibility is immense.
Some studies put the value of unpaid carers in the UK in the billions. The Office for National Statistics estimated the value of this unpaid work at £56.9bn. That’s an incredible amount. If these women all decided to go and work full-time in the private or public sector, leaving their children, parents and siblings to be cared for by the state, not only would our overstretched NHS probably reach breaking point, but also the state would have to fund billions worth of additional later-life and early-stage child care. Our taxes would rise exponentially.
But women do not seem to value this work — perhaps because traditionally nobody has given much thought to the real worth of a woman doing childcare or caring for older relatives. And if women do not value this unpaid work, they will not value themselves enough to think about their own financial needs.
Some of the women working part-time are also coping with mental or physical ill-health of their own. Others are worried about going back to work full-time, or are struggling to cope with the financial impact of divorce in the day to day, let alone worrying about whether they need to shore up their pension or get a lawyer who understands the rules around pension sharing on divorce.
Put simply, women — you need to talk about these things with each other. Ask difficult questions. Get a financial adviser or speak with Citizens’ Advice. Take time to look after your own finances — because if you do not, I can promise you, nobody else will. And start valuing yourself, whether you are in the workplace or not. You are worth more than you think, so do not be afraid to shout about it.
The more we talk about money, the more we will all learn from each other. And the more power we will have when it comes to taking control of our financial health.
Simoney Kyriakou is an award winning financial journalist, blogger, crafter and maker, mother and wife.
You can read more about insuring women’s futures here