Welcome to another episode of the Good Money Vibes podcast, my name is Emilie Nutley I’m a Money Coach I’m Financial Educator and it’s my job to help you feel good with money that is what this podcast aims to do I aim to do it through educating you about the systems and the just everything that’s going on that formulates our behaviours with money so that you can forgive yourself a little bit and so that you able to go forwards making better financial decisions so let’s get into it.
This week I wanted to talk about why money is a feminist issue I get such eye rolles and sometimes my partner likes to call me a feminist blogger as an insult but is just that’s just who I am now so money is fundamentally a feminist issue because it’s so blatantly obvious when you take even just two seconds to look at it how women are disadvantaged against men in terms of money wealth and everything around that; careers, investing, pensions, credit scores, there’s wherever you look in finance there is a gender gap where men are better off; So I want to raise awareness to this not only because part of what I want to do is I love to join this fight to close those gaps and part of closing those gaps is giving women the education that they need so hi, hello, it’s what I’m here to do. But also in raising awareness of those gaps we can be more forgiving of ourselves we can be aware of them in our lives and how we might need to work a bit more carefully with our finances at different points of our lives, so we’ll go through them.
I have a few points if I’m looking up and reading if you’re watching the video version that’s because I’m making sure that I am again I have things to quote and studies to reference in this episode and I want to make sure that I am getting the right information so I want to start by talking about income equality. This is one of those things where every year equal payday comes around and people like a post about it on Instagram and other social media platforms and what happens is men, always men, love to run to the comments and be like um there isn’t a gender pay gap because it’s illegal like there isn’t a gender pay gap, you’re lying.. and they might be true, but this is why: the gender pay gap doesn’t relate to how much a man and a woman is paid in the same job. So let’s say in my old job in the council and my mate Alex I couldn’t be paid differently because I’m a woman and he’s a man however what it does relate to is the idea that if you look at a company in general, you look at kind of employees on a whole and you look at who is in the higher paying roles and who is in the lower paying roles and work it out that way. That the people who are in the higher paying roles are the men therefore over industries over an entire country there becomes a gender pay gap because women are generally earning less than men and I have some statistics for you, of course. I don’t tell you anything without coming with the data to back it so this is from the Fawcett Society, and their whole thing is pay equality and they do all sorts of amazing research and studies on this and they are actively fighting for gender pay gap.
On the 22nd of November 2023, so not too long ago, they posted about equal payday 2023. The 22nd of November 2023 was Equal Pay Day which is the day when, because of the gender pay gap, women overall just kind of an average in the UK, stop being paid compared to men. So this means on average working women take home £574 less than men each month which is £6,888 per annum.
Just take that in, so essentially from the 22nd of November until the 31st of December if you’re a woman, you are getting paid for free, and that’s because of these averages. At the current rate of change, this is depressing and I promise I try not to make this episode too depressing I’ll try and at the end talk about how we can actively fight against this, at the current rate of change gender pay gap won’t close until 2051, that’s 28 years from now. I just literally had to do like quick maths and be like will I still be working then, probably, so I mean hopefully in our lifetimes but still too far away, and women aged 40 or older, so basically anyone that is born before 1983, won’t see the gender pay gap close before they reach state state pension age. Their entire lives have been spent with this unbalance.
I just want to kind of clarify what that number is because obviously like I said if me and my friend Alex me and my colleague Alex are working the same job sat next to each other in the office we are not being paid differently I’m not being paid £500 less a month but what’s happening is on average in the UK working men and working women do have a difference and working men are earning on average 500 pounds more per month than working women. That’s what the difference is, so yes it is illegal for men and women to be paid differently based on their genders for the same job it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen and there are several ways actually that this gender pay gap can manifest and we will talk about them, but I want to just raise awareness of right now is women tend not to negotiate whereas men tend to negotiate and there’s so many things that come into that. Number one is just how we have been brought up in society and how women have been told that talking about money isn’t polite, you know it’s not the done thing usually when women are talking about money we’re talking about like saving money on food shopping, it’s always saving saving saving, scrimping, frugal, all of those things if you say those things you’re looking at women. If you were to Google image some of those phrases like frugality, money saving, you’ll find pictures of women but if you talk about increasing income, promotions, investing, you’ll see pictures of men and this is just how we have been socialised, how we have been brought up, the things that were talked about ,and because of that, say let’s say me and my male friend Alex go for the same job I might not negotiate that wage or if I do I don’t negotiate it very high whereas he’s going to because of how he’s been brought up what he’s been taught is accepted of him what is you know what is the done thing so just in that actually we could end up having different wages for the same job and it’s just based on how we’ve negotiated so there are different things at play obviously contractually if it it’s £10 an hour for both of you then it’s £10 an hour for both of you, but if it’s one of those kind of competitive negotiable salaries, say a higher position, there is a chance that a woman and a man might negotiate differently.
That kind of ties nicely into my next point which is about access to financial education and resources so obviously I spoke at the beginning about how it is my job as a female money coach and financial educator to teach women about money and there’s a reason why I do it specifically for women and marginalised genders, and that is because as a society and how we’ve been brought up, it is far more common for men to receive financial education than it is women. Historically women have had less access to financial education and resources which impacts our ability to manage money invest and secure any kind of financial future empowering women with financial knowledge and tools is crucial for achieving Financial Independence and confidence so, hi, hello, that’s why here why I’m here and why I do what I do women need to have access to these things if we’re going to make any sort of change and any sort of fight back against these gender gaps that exist in the world of finance, and like I said it’s not just the gender pay gap, there’s the investing gap, there’s the pension gap, there’s the credit score gap, there’s the negotiation gap, there’s starting a business gap, there’s getting business funding gap, literally in every single area of finance that you look at there is a gender gap in that men and women are being paid differently and most often they not it’s men that are getting paid more or are at more of an advantage.
How women can fight against that is getting that financial education and getting access to those resources so it might be that we do have to put ourselves out there a little bit more to achieve the same results that a man does.
The third point I want to talk about is economic independence, so for a long long time women’s economic status was tied to their fathers or if they were married then their husbands achieved Financial Independence is a significant aspect of feminism and allowing women to make choices about their lives without being constrained by Financial dependency. Since becoming a mother I have joined loads of like mum and baby groups on Facebook, your parent groups, things like that, and I’m in a few where just, I think in every single group I’ve seen some sort of comment or post where a woman has been asking for help about a certain situation and maybe it’s come out that they’re not in the best relationship either just not going on or there is actual abuse going on, then the next comment is usually that person being like well I can’t get out because I don’t have any money, and that’s I mean I’m going to talk about this later but is usually down to at that point in their lives these a mum and baby groups, at that point in their life, the mum is the main caregiver and therefore is usually not at work so the men are the breadwinners for that particular point of time.
In that woman’s life means that they have less access to money should it be that way no but in a lot of relationships you see it where the man controls the money or especially the money coming in because he kind of sees it as his, but again I want to talk about men and women’s roles in the household and how that affects women’s financials. Women financially, to put into context how recently women could have Financial Independence is when you think of 1975 I don’t think of it as that long ago I wasn’t born in 1975 but my parents were that’s when my parents were teenagers, early 20s, so it wasn’t until 1975 that women could open a bank account in their name. That is single women could not apply for a loan or credit card in their name without a signature from their father even if they earned more as recently as the mid-70s which is insane. It’s slightly earlier for if you were widowed, you could open a bank account in the 1960s. But yeah for single people, mid 70s which is so incredibly recent.
Okay, we’re on to my favourite point, the point I think that I could probably talk all day about but I’m going to keep it succinct for the sake of the podcast and to not bore you to death. Roles in household financial decisions. Now when I first think about this I think it’s split because when I was first studying finance I went into it from a personal finance point of view and I did some courses about managing the household budget, and things like that, very much household finances, and in that, I remember the first course I did, and that taught that it was women that made most of the financial decisions for the household, and I completely get where they were coming from but men seem to make more of the bigger financial decisions and a lot of that comes down to the different gender roles in households how finances are split in relationships, and especially where a relationship might have children. So obviously if a couple has children, nine times out of 10 it will be the women that take the time off work to look after the child, not all the time and I will say that we are getting better as a society that having men take more time off, obviously at the moment financially that’s usually why that decision is that way because men just don’t get the paternity leave that women do get access to, not that it’s not possible, I and my partner did shared parental leave. We had 3 months together which was nice and then I did the remaining 9 months on my own. But what typically happens is the men will take their two weeks off sometimes they’ll use annual leave as well as have a month – six weeks, then they go back to work and they are primarily the breadwinners for the remaining of that maternity leave.
What then happens is that maternity leave is usually if they are the sole providers I mean the women will be earning something from maternity pay but in some examples that I’ve seen the relationship if the money is not split in an equal way and equal is not 50/50, then it becomes grossly unfair on the women and that’s where women get into financial difficulty and a lot of people that I speak to that have racked up credit card debt it all started when their children were babies and they on maternity leave because going from having a full wage of say two grand a month to having s SMP of like six – 700 a month is massive and if you’re split 50/50 that might mean that your 700 is taken up by bills. Think about how much money right now you spend on your bills you’re just your half if you split 50/50 if you were earning 600-700 a month, could you afford that and if you could how much does it leave you to do anything, considering that you are not working and you have to be you mean you’re going to be expected to leave the house like there are mom and baby groups, and there are baby toddler classes, and like they are not cheap, so I will hold this to the day I die: 50/50 is not a fair split, especially if you have children, so don’t do that. Not only is it financially unfair for the woman in that aspect, but let’s say the finances are split equally in terms of proportion or however you do it you have an agreement it works it seems fair recently I spoke to a woman who was wanted to build up savings for having a second child and we were having our coaching session and it kind of dawned on me I was like hang on a second your goal is to save this much for a second child and this is how much you earn we can work this plan out but what’s your partner doing like, I assume you want to have this baby with someone right like I’m assuming okay what is that man providing because if you are having to save 10 grand so that you can take a year off work, what why isn’t that man contributing to it? I just I just don’t understand it. Another thing, and I think this is the big thing that contributes to a lot of the gaps.. so let’s say we’ve got this kind of stereotypical household where the man has had two weeks off and is back at work they’re earning the majority of the money, but not all of it because the woman is bringing in some, they have some savings that mean that they can survive or maternity leave that’s all good, let’s say the finances are all split all equal, very fair, great, it’s still contributing to massive gaps in that woman’s financial life because of, I won’t say two or three different reasons:
Number one is career progression. Mow maternity, pregnancy, all of that isn’t supposed to disadvantage women, I mean if you’re watching the video like eye roll because it does okay it does. If you are on maternity, and this happened to my partner who was on paternity leave, so like I said he was off 3 months with me and a job came up, well I think it was a specific training thing that came up and everyone in his department did it apart from him. He wasn’t even asked to to do it, and as a man, and we already know there’s there’s the advantage to them. So career progression stuff that you are going to miss out on whether that be training opportunities, whether it be promotions, whether it be just you know office politics things that you’re just not going to be involved in or know anything about um there’s going to be plenty of stuff that means that when you do go back you might find it a lot harder to go up the ranks or you have missed opportunities to do, you find cases where women get made redundant where they’ve had to hire a replacement and you know the company for whatever reason like doesn’t want to fire the replacement or doesn’t want to get rid of them so they, you know this woman hasn’t been here for 9 months or 12 months let’s just get rid of her, again like I said these things not meant to happen but they do so being realistic.
What have we got, we’ve got the career advantages that men have by not having to take a year off or more to look after children because of that there is a pension gap. So what the pension gap is, is the amount of money a man and a woman have when in their workplace pension, usually because it comes down to whether or not they’ve been in the workplace or private pension, I don’t mean to scare you but some of these numbers are a bit drastic.. so the gender pension gap is estimated to be more than twice the size of the gender pay gap and while women’s retirement wealth averages only one-third of a man’s in the UK. So let’s look at some numbers: The gender pension gap reports, this is in 2022 – 3 million women in the UK are currently locked out of workplace pension saving and even those that can save are reaching retirement age with a pension pot of £136,800 less than men on average. To put that into perspective sometimes we can think that number and when you were talking about big numbers it can be very hard to kind of visualise what that means, so men’s pension wealth at retirement age on average, again these are all averages, £205,000. £205,000 is what is in their pension pot at retirement age, this next number makes me cry, okay remember the difference you remember the difference was in the hundred thousand yeah, okay so men’s pension wealth at retirement age £205,800.. a divorced woman’s pension wealth at retirement age £26,000. Could you imagine £26,000 that’s all you’ve got, and the man standing next to you has £205,800?
There’s actually um a little calculation here: that for women to retire at age 65 with the same income as men they would need to work from the age of four which is just.. what you can do to fix this, because I want everyone to have a healthy pension. After all, no one wants to be panicking when they get into retirement age and everyone wants to retire at some point. If those numbers shock you don’t worry there is something you can do about it. After listening to this podcast today I want you, if you are employed, I want you to go to your employer and work out or ask what you’re currently contributing and start contributing the maximum amount you can afford, so whether that’s a 1% increase or a 3% increase, work it out and put in the most that you can afford to do whether you have a workplace pension or not I think you should do this. Next step, so even if you are not employed, maybe you’re a business owner, you should have a private pension, have this on top of your workplace pension if you have one and if you are self-employed, you’re a business owner, absolutely get a private pension sorted as soon as possible and start putting in as much as you can afford.
Another thing you can do is you can start to look at investing, so again there is a gender investing gap that shows that men are investing more than women that’s again primarily down to how we are socialised, how we’re taught about money as men and women, it is more talked about in male circles, so yeah you can do things but we do have to actively go out there and do those things, they’re not going to come to us unfortunately so I want you to, there are many pension calculators out there I want you to do some calculations and I want you to look at what you’re currently contributing and increase it if you can. On top of the pension thing, I’m going to stop soon, on top of the pension thing not only do men have, can’t even remember how much more but a lot more, 20 grand versus 200 Grand, even though they have such significantly higher pension, women generally live longer than men. Women live longer than men and we have a pension pot one-third of the size, it’s just ridiculous, honestly any way you think about it, any way you look at it, it’s just absolutely ridiculous. Any of these can be happening and I know it’s really easy to say, and easy just to blame on like, well people want to have children, and this that the other, don’t get me started, this isn’t to say like having children is the only reason why these gaps exist but it is a big reason, there are numerous reasons why these gaps exist, mostly coming down to historical context how we’re socialised, how we’re marketed too.
You’ll probably notice that Do you remember when Klarna, like buy now pay later became a really big thing where was Klarna advertised first where did it target first: clothing stores, but like female clothing stores? What colour is Klarna’s branding? Pink. These things designed to make you spend money are targeted at women, these resources teach you how to save money, how to save money in the food shop, and how to stop spending so frivolously, all aimed at women. How to get promotions, how to increase your income, how to invest, how to start a business, all these things marketed at men. So I want you to forgive yourself that you know maybe certain situations within your finances exist because it is most likely not entirely down to you and it’s especially when it comes down to spending money, if you are an overspender, yeah sure that’s not great but there are going to be lots of reasons why you overspend and I willing to bet money that some of those reasons are down to how we’re socialised when it comes to talking about money, so whether that’s because of how you’re marketed towards because of what how money was talked about in your household, how money was talked about growing up in school, all of these things leave a lasting mark, so forgive yourself. But also, I want you to take this information I want you to run with it and I want you to I want you to tell all of your friends because the only reason, the only way we change this, is by standing up and telling people that we we’re done with this and that we’ve had enough. Also, I want you to go away and go, “Right okay I know these things are now an issue I’m going to make sure that I’m able to do my best to counteract them” So looking at your pension, making sure that you do have a solid career plan, that you know you know you do go for promotions, do not go.. do not wait to.. this is another thing as well:
So apparently women will wait until they match 80% of a job description to apply for a job whereas men will wait to match like 50%, I can’t remember the exact numbers but it is kind of that difference. A woman will make sure she meets pretty much all of the points of the job description whereas a man would not when they go for the job. If you can meet all the roles in a job description you are overqualified, so please don’t be doing that, I want you to go for the promotions, go for the jobs, negotiate your wage if you want to start a business, start that business, I want you to start investing, I want you to read a finance book even if it’s just two or three a year, take courses, work with a money coach, like take action to fight against the inequality that is out there you can become financially independent, you can put yourself in a position for financial security and leave a legacy for your family, you just need to take action because the world is built against us.
The last thing I want to say is, just on that point of if you’re in a relationship and how you split money please please please always have open conversations with your partner about money I want you to be open I want you, to be honest, I want you to make sure that the way you’re splitting money is truly fair and not 50/50 unless you’re both earning the exact amount of money doing the exact amount of unpaid labour then 50/50 is never a fair split. I want you to work out what that split looks like I want if you have goals like going on a holiday. save so that you can take time off to have a baby, save for a house, I want to make sure that you are splitting those equitably as well, and if you are in a position where you don’t feel like that can happen your partner shuts you down your partner won’t talk to you about money, your partner is trying to control everything about money, your partner is adamant on a 50-50 split even though you earn like you know £500 less, your partner doesn’t pay for bills.. anything that makes you think of a slight red flag.. please get out. Please, if they won’t change, if they’re not open to hearing about how these things are unfair, then do yourselves a favour and get out now before it is too late because far too common and far too frequently I’m seeing women in these Facebook groups that are stuck in situations, they feel trapped and they want to leave, or they are just playing up being financially abused, so please be aware of how money works in your relationship, please be open and honest ask for the same, expect the same and if you don’t get the same wave goodbye.
I’ve left that like a really dramatic point, this is quite obviously the the longest podcast episode I’ve done so far because I literally could talk for England about money being a feminist issue and there’s so much more that I could say but I just wanted to raise awareness to the fact that it is a thing there are inequalities they do exist they are very very very real. You know those numbers I told you today are legit numbers from research studies in the last two, yeah one or two years. Honestly do a bit of Googling for yourself and you will see that I am right. If you do have partners, you do have family members, maybe you’ve got a sister, cousin, thing like that, send the data to them and be like oh my god did you like know about this like let’s tell as many women as we can and let’s strive for financial power and the ability to do whatever we want with our money and not feel trapped. That’s what I’m about. Thank you for listening I yeah sorry I waffled, great episode only managed to record half of it on my phone because it’s run out of storage, that’s embarrassing, isn’t it? I will speak to you next week, the next episode is all about the psychology of saving money, talking about money habits in general so hopefully a really practical episode. I know kind of the last few episodes have been very kind of like educational and raising awareness about different elements of finances and how they affect us but hopefully, the next couple will be just super informative in terms of actual practical steps that you can do so thank you for joining me and I will speak to you soon.
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