If women could only count

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/03/2015 (3922 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — There I was last week, sipping a coffee at my desk while trying not to go cross-eyed from reading the fine print of the government’s anti-terror legislation when an email popped up on my screen.

“Four reasons women should cut their credit cards today,” screamed the headline.

Scanning the content my eyebrows raised just a little, when the advice from an Ohio-based financial adviser suggested women should spend less on manicures and Botox treatments and more on their retirements.

Talk about a sexist and simplistic viewpoint on financial struggles facing most women.

I forwarded the email to an editor with a note marking my dismay and went back to the anti-terror bill.

Later that day, I was still steamed enough about it I went back and found it again so I could forward it to my colleague, Mary Agnes Welch, with another little rant.

It was not until I was clearing my inbox this week I noticed the press release I forwarded to Welch was entirely different than the one I sent to my editor.

So in a single day, I actually received not just one, but two, press releases offering women financial advice that was about as patronizing as patting them on the head and saying “good girl.”

In one, Erica McCain, a financial adviser and author of the book Ladies with Loot offers up “four reasons women should cut their credit cards today,” including wanting money for retirement and likely needing money to spend on your kids. She says women will kick themselves later when they realize “$200 would’ve been better spent for retirement, rather than at the salon.”

“While women continue to make impressive strides in academics, in the business world and with buying power in general, a significant percentage are vulnerable to retail therapy and other modes of frivolous spending,” McCain is paraphrased as saying in the press release.

The second release was from Lance Drucker, who owns a New York City firm that specializes in financial issues that affect women. By Drucker’s estimation, those issues include buying too many Louis Vuitton handbags and “the chocolate-and-wine approach to life” he defines as “hoping things will just get better.”

Turns out both press releases were based on a new Prudential survey about the financial experiences and behaviours of women in the United States.

The survey, it should be noted, appears perfectly sound. It sought information about how women perceive their financial situations, their confidence in managing money and their role in household financial management and decisions.

There was nary a mention in the survey of women who can’t save for their kids’ education because they are shopaholics who are addicted to getting their nails done.

The Prudential survey showed women have laudable and realistic long-term financial goals, and that all told, they actually are very in line with men when it comes to financial goals, understanding things such as investments and retirement planning, and how comfortable they are making financial decisions.

Apparently that part was lost on the financial advisers who decided women are all possible cast members of the Real Housewives of Anywhere who would be able to live well in retirement if they could just forgo that pretty pair of shoes.

It is insulting to say the least and not the least bit helpful.

How is it, that in 2015, we are still so entrenched in the stereotypes of gender that the immediate assumptions are women can’t handle money because they spend too much time shopping and drinking designer coffee?

How about a discussion about how hard it is to save money for retirement while shelling out a third of your income on child care? Or the fact women still make less than men, despite gains in education? Or why not discuss why young professionals with decent-paying jobs are still struggling paycheque to paycheque because of student loans bigger than the debt of some entire countries. Or why women in their 50s are stretched to capacity, helping put their kids through college at the same time as they are footing the bill for aging and ailing parents.

But it’s not surprising. Gender stereotypes are so deeply entrenched in our society, we impose them on babies even before they are born. Go to any fast-food restaurant and buy a kids’ meal, and you will be asked if you want a boy toy or a girl toy.

Browse the toy department of any store — online or in person — and you will see girls’ sections and boys’ sections. My head nearly exploded off my shoulders last week when I saw the website of a major multinational toy retailer delineating between role-playing toys for toddlers by gender.

In the boys’ section was a single item, a workbench.

On the girls’ side there were four items — two shopping carts, a toy vacuum and a play kitchen.

Because apparently, we need our kids to know from the time they can walk and talk boys play with tools and girls play house.

It is so hard not to fall into the trap of gender-stereotyping our kids when it’s so overtly shoved down our throats.

Interestingly enough, another press release was issued this week. This one from John MacAulay, the senior vice-president for Prairies and central division of BMO Bank of Montreal.

MacAulay cites a BMO poll that found more than two in three women think men are treated better than women by the financial services industry, (and almost the same number of men agree with them). As well, eight in 10 Canadians — men and women alike — think financial professionals view male clients as the primary decision-maker when they meet with a male-female couple.

And yet, MacAulay notes women in North America control one-third of all wealth, a number that is growing at eight per cent a year, and nearly one million women in Canada alone are now the owners of their own businesses.

It’s no wonder women feel belittled by the financial services industry — and as Prudential found in its survey are less likely than men to turn to a professional for financial advice — when the advice being given is akin to treating women like they are all characters in Sex and the City, who are one designer-shoe purchase away from financial ruin.

Mia Rabson is the Free Press parliamentary bureau chief.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca