Why Women Get Stuck On Money Issues

Were you a ‘Daddy’s girl’?  A little princess?  Were you treated as if your every whim was a cue for Daddy to spring into action and make it reality?

Or was Father stern and aloof?  Did he ignore you or make you feel like you were bothering him when he was doing “important” work?

Our first close opposite gender relationship is with our father and it sets the tone for every other relationship we have with men, for the rest of our lives.

It is also usually our fathers who first teach us about money – either by actually sitting us down and explaining what money is and how to use it effectively, or, by saying cryptically “save it” but not giving us any idea how to do that.

Most of our employers are men and, if you started working in the early 1970’s (as I did) you knew that you were probably being paid half as much as your male colleagues (two-thirds, if you were lucky).

There is no question that women have travelled a different road than men when it comes to having and using money – especially married women.

Did you know, that until 1870, any money a woman received (earned income, inheritance, gift, etc.) automatically became her husband’s property – along with any real property and/or chattel goods she owned before the marriage – and he had the legal right to dispose of these things at his sole discretion?

These restrictions did not apply, however, to unmarried and widowed women, who were allowed to retain control of their own money and property.

So you could be alone and have control of your life and finances, or, you could be married (hopefully for love, but not always) and lose control of everything in your life.

This challenging reality was first changed by the Married Women’s Property Act 1870 in the United Kingdom, which ruled that any money earned by a woman remained her property and did not pass into her husband’s control.

By 1882, the Act was expanded to allow married women to hold property in their own name – the first time this was the case since the thirteenth century!

So there you have it, ladies … the challenge of love vs. money has been with us for over 700 years!!! That’s a lot of history and collective memory to escape from.

“A woman’s best protection is a little money of her own.” ~ Clare Boothe Luce