Women+money

On this International Women’s Day, don’t forget these unfortunate and blood boiling facts about the history of women and money. 

Let’s start with this great thing called the Law of Coverture, which has existed since the Middle Ages. It evolved through the courts of England and ravelled with the Pilgrims to the US colonies.

The Law of Coverture said that when a woman gets married, her woman’s rights are absorbed into the marriage to become one entity with her husband, and her identity is “covered” by her husband’s identity. 

She could not own any property, keep wages earned outside of the home, educate herself, or make decisions about the children without her husband’s approval. She also had to get permission from her husband regarding her own body as it was considered his property. 

(Anyone else want to throw up right now?!?)

This law slowly deteriorated as states enacted laws that enabled women to own and control property, keep her wages, sign contracts, and inherit property separate from her husband.

Unfortunately, the chipping away of the Law of Coverture was not due to women being empowered or even seen as equals. Of course, the new laws were to benefit the men economically….ahhhh patriarchy you have been and still are so fucking sneaky.

So, if a husband’s assets were threatened by debt collectors or bankruptcy, he could transfer them to his wife’s name. He still owned his wife and her decisions, so the assets were still his and protected. 

Again, ughhhhh!!!!

Luckily, by the end of the 1800s the Law of Coverture had mainly collapsed. While many of the laws were to benefit men, women found a way to become empowered and eventually own homes, businesses, and have bank accounts and lines of credit.

Unfortunately, it took until 1974 for woman to be able to get a bank account or loan on their own before that, single, widowed, or divorced women needed a man to co-sign.

So, that is good news, but, a man could still rape his wife until the 1970s, well, that is when the act started to be questioned as an actual crime. It was partially illegal in Michigan (I am not quite sure what that means!), Delaware in 1974, and South Dakota and Nebraska in 1975.  

Raping your wife didn’t become illegal in all 50 states until July 5, 1993!! 

W.T. Actual F. I was 19! And very likely knew women who were getting raped by their husbands. 

In 1978, another good thing came into law that protected women’s wages, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which stated you couldn’t fire a woman who became pregnant.

When you look back on the evolution of women’s rights, our inability to control property, money, or our bodies, it’s no wonder that money is so hard for women. 

It’s also not surprising that so many women look to men to take care of them financially and be solely in charge of the finances. 

It is in our fiber that we can’t and therefore shouldn’t be the one in charge of the money. 

So of course, 93% of women are anxious about money.

Plus:

• Women still make 84 cents for every dollar that a man makes

• Nearly half (42 percent) of mothers have had to reduce work hours to care for a child or family member, compared with just 28 percent of fathers.

• In 2021, only 4 percent of C-suite positions were held by women of color, compared to 62 percent that were held by white men.

• In 2023 only 11.8% of C-suite positions were held by women.

The wage gap is a very real thing and so is the rarity of finding a woman in the c-suite. 

Women are better savers than men, but because of the difference in income it is harder for us to save for emergencies. 

But, for the first time in history, women are able to spend and make money as they want to.

However, we have been programmed to believe it’s ok to have “just enough” and to gratefully take what we are given. This creates so much anxiety!!! 

Because, “just enough” is never enough when we want to have an emergency fund, buy a home, have quality healthcare and food, take care of your family, retire, or have fun.

So, if you are super anxious about money and feel like you don’t even know what to do with it when you do, give yourself a break, it’s not a part of the message we were given growing up.

Magazines STILL tell us cut out lattes to get ahead while men’s magazines discuss investing (we probably shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about that, right?!?!).

So, hold yourself in love and compassion knowing that our road as women has not been easy with money and we have had to fight to get where we are. 

We unconsciously hold so much money trauma and culturally imbedded beliefs about what we can do, who we are, and how we should behave as women that it takes work and conscious action to overcome this. 

We have to release emotional traumas around money and our gender that define us, hold us back, and keep us stuck in our money stories.

Money is power and freedom. 

Join the forces of women who took the bold steps to get us where we are like Madam CJ Walker who became the first female millionaire, Muriel Siebert was the first woman to have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1967, or Maggie Lena Walker who in 1903 became the first woman in the U.S. to charter a bank.

Do this by working on your money stories, your history, your trauma, and becoming financially literate and confident.

We need to keep going and pave the way for future generations.

Do this with me in Magical Mystical Money. Unravel the BS in your fabric and write a new money story for yourself, your daughters, nieces, neighbors, and women across the world. Find out more HERE.