Women Mismanage Money: Another Myth
In a recent Washington Post article, Hannah Seligson discussed the idea that women have trouble managing money. She traced the fate of a plan by Kimberley Palmer of US News and World Report to write a young women's guide to managing money. However, once Palmer looked into the data, she saw "The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that single men and women between the ages of 25 and 34 spend at similar levels. The main difference is that single men spend more on transportation, while single women spend more on apparel and services. (Men, incidentally, spend about twice as much on alcohol and $600 more on car purchases.)" All categories she checked showed young women equally proficient with men. So she wrote a unisex guide.
But Seligson noted that Amazon continues to have a category for "money management for women" but no such category for men. There are plenty of new books that fall into women and money category too. So why do these books sell so well if women don't need them? It's our old enemy, lack of confidence. Although women do as well as men managing their money, they don't think they do. Seligson says, "The authors of women-focused financial books capitalize on and reinforce these insecurities and perpetuate stereotypes about women and money with their "girl, get a clue" tone; their covers and titles that imply we are all out-of-control spenders on shoes and clothes; and their tendency to put financial concepts in the language of dieting and weight."
She believes the lack of confidence may be decreasing, though. For example, she notes that "FindLaw.com, a legal-affairs Web site, found in a 2009 national survey that married women between ages 18 and 34 were more likely than married men or older women to play a significant role in understanding a couple's finances."
So if the society can get over the myth of women's lack of money skills, can we leverage that to a belief in women's ability to do math and science? I see a relationship there.
cheers,
Laura
What do you think?
A I don't see how money management relates to math and science ability
B Confidence is the common factor all right, but I don't see it building in women scientists the same way it seems to be in general (FindLaw survey results).
C I take it as a sign that as women generally get more confident, it should slop over into math and science and help women who'd like to pursue those fields feel more comfortable in them.
Interesting but also frustrating Laura:) I think its a value issue that affects your priorities and thus how you make decisions. They are logical and well thought out decisions, just not always self-interested ones when it comes to money. No connection to confidence or science in my opinion.
Hi Helen,
So you see the management of money as a side issue that women in science do need to consider, but not one that really predicts their success in any way. Interesting!
Cheers,
Laura
A. for me. Gotta be alone on this one I guess. Although there are plenty of money management books for women, and I've read a couple, the part that resonated with me the most was the typical affirmation that you need to put yourself first in cases like retirement and not put so much towards your child's college fund or for their future investments. Although I know this consciously, its still tough to make myself do as I put my child ahead of myself. My husband of course finds this all intuitive and has no trouble with it:)
B for me too. I think confidence is pretty often faked, but that's what we need to show in order to do well in science. Practice makes it easier to 'put on' confidence, and so managing money may well transfer over to other uses of math as in lab work.
I agree. Young women are just as varied as they can be. We do have some confident young women. Some are confident based on their supreme success and others are hiding insecurity. I think there is too much self-censorship among women, though. We hate to sound dumb, probably because it does cost us more than it costs guys to say something stupid occasionally.
Hi SciFemXX,
I really agree with you. Even strong women can feel that underlying anxiety about whether they really belong and fit into this world of science. Ellen Daniell does express it very well in that book, which I had the pleasure of reviewing for AWIS Magazine a while back. It's a really riveting read, for anyone who missed it. Anyway, SciFemXX, I was just saying there is a lot of variety, not trying to say all young women are filled with confidence.
cheers,
Laura
Here I'd say B. I am not as sure of the confidence of young women who LOOK confident as Laura seems to be. Sometimes it's hiding a world of insecurity. I've put on confidence I don't feel myself at times, and it sort of works to brazen through a situation but afterwards you feel like a fraud. I really identified with that fraud theme in Ellen Daniell's book Every Other Thursday I think was the title. Amy Bug referred to in on other thread on this site. It's about women forming a group to support each other, and identifying their good and bad strategies, their strong ideas and their misconceptions. An amazing number of the very successful ones felt like frauds, just waiting to be unmasked as incompetent. Probably it didn't show to their co-workers.
for Computer Science, C is the choice, I'd say. If you can't think mathematically, you can't make much progress in solving problems in CS or in investing in the stock market, etc. But CS people, male or female, are not often very interested in what the stock market is doing. They can make naive mistakes and lose their money. I am not sure this is gender-related though.
Hi Laura,
I think for mathematics and statistics women, the ability to manage money is very related to what we do. On my math chauvinistic days, I'd say C for everyone who is a serious scientist, mathmatician, engineer, or tech person. How can you not be skilled in math to succeed in these fields?
I've met some very confident young women in science, ones who even claim they have never run into any discrimination. I've also met some top flight women in science at younger ages who admit in private they've run into some discrimination, but consider it was not very important in their careers. Then, I've met some women whose attempts at careers in science have been buffeted strongly by bias against women on the part of their mentors and professors. Right now, there's not a good generalization about younger women's confidence, I'd say, it depends on who they've met along their path.
cheers,
Laura
I have to pick B on this one. I only wish I saw confidence in the younger women in science.
