This is a series of ongoing women’s consciousness raising sessions.This is how it works:
We are inviting women from diverse cultures, races, sexual orientation, and all who
self-identify as women, regardless of birth gender, to share their personal stories about their encounters with sexism, racism, classism or similar forms of discrimination as they relate to the larger issues of women's oppression.
Traditionally the women’s movement has called these moments “clicks” --when it clicks in our mind that we are being oppressed in our day to day lives. If through dialogue, we find ways to work together to move the lives of women forward, great. If not, we can at least listen to each other and become more sensitive to each others' goals.
These diaries are intended to be dialogues among women from their own perspectives. We ask men readers to respect this. Deliberate use of divisive racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic or classist remarks will receive one warning before the might of the daily kos moderation system is brought to bear! Please don't "feed the troll" by responding to them to avoid disruption of the discussion.
We hope to have a rotating diary writer and chair each week. If you would like to write a diary and moderate the weekly discussion (or have a problem posting or commenting) please contact us Dkos at Geminijen or NY Brit Expat.
NB: Tonight's contribution has been written by woman that has chosen to remain anonymous; I am publishing it under my name for the diary series.
Option Three: Marry a Rich Man
The other day at a party, a friend noted how her personal relationships were messed up because part of her was always looking for a man that she could be financial dependent on and the other part refused to get involved with such a man because it went against her feminist principles. Her statement seemed like an embarrassment in a feminist world where marriage is no longer supposed to be the answer, but rather part of the problem. These days women talk about independence, about making our own life so we don’t have to rely on a man. We go out and get careers. No more of the secretary marrying the boss.
Statistics show that women have, in fact, made great strides in many fields. At least one study suggests that all women (on average) have gained income parity with men. Other studies suggest we are almost at parity.
So when women act this ambivalent, needy and vulnerable, we pretend it isn’t happening. We try to convince ourselves that we can have our cake and eat it too. Of course we’ve all seen the T.V. show where every woman lawyer or doctor looks like a supermodel (with four inch heels and a little cleavage showing) after working a fifteen hour day. And we all know at least one successful professional woman who still bases her self esteem more on what a man thinks of her than her success in the professional world.
As for the institution of marriage that we keep saying is a choice; after living together for ten years, we finally decide to marry because we want children and it will be easier on them emotionally. Or we want to marry as a public demonstration of our personal commitment. Or marriage has changed and is much more equitable so we are marrying for love, not money. As for gay marriage, we want the same rights (and possibly the right to be as messed up) as everyone else. Besides, we’re keeping our own last name.
We say that all the dieting, plucking and breast implants are really to make us feel good about ourselves for ourselves. It certainly has nothing to do with the fact that we are competing with other women for a man or afraid our spouses will leave us for a younger trophy wife in ten years. We’ve all seen the reality or talk shows where women are fighting over men or a woman says the first criteria is that a man has to have money before she’ll date him (and we all cluck in disapproval at the stupid gold digging “bitches” who don’t have enough pride to make it on their own).
I have heard many a feminist woman put other women down for ditching their women friends at the first sign of a man, any man, as the result of brainwashing where we were taught to believe that a woman needs a relationship with a man to feel fulfilled. But is this continued vulnerability only coming from our hearts? One of the feminist “clicks” I had was when a couple of the women in the Women’s Dialogue mentioned the fact that it was because their fathers had left them property that they had the confidence to live an independent life. As a Marxist, I still believe that money does inform many of our decisions, even when it is not conscious. So I did a little research.
The Wealth Gap vs. the Income Gap
Lo and behold, several recent studies show that, even with women’s increased economic upward mobility and more opportunities for well paying work, the main gains women have made in income are still due to inheritance from our fathers or marrying well. This is called the difference between total “wealth” income and wage income.
Here are a few statistics:
1) A substantial wealth gap continues to exist between single women and single men. Couple households (married and cohabitating) have the highest median wealth ($127,300) and single women have the lowest ($15,210). This is 49% of the income of single men ($31,210). As for that statistic where women have gained income parity with men, if you separate out the wealth income from fathers and husbands and rely solely on women’s self-generated income, women only have 8% of men’s total income.
2) Single women ages 65 and older have 84% of the median wealth of single men ages 65 and older. The higher gender wealth ratio for older persons, however, is probably a result of the larger percentage of widows in this age group (married couples are generally wealthier and upon the death of a spouse marital assets are usually inherited by the surviving spouse). The only place we come out clearly ahead is that widowed women ages 65 and over have a higher median wealth than widowed men. So you have to stick around long enough to collect the insurance.
3) Even if you marry and get a settlement, divorced women under age 65 have 64% of the wealth of their male counterparts.
4) Finally, women’s wealth gap is not a relic of prior generations. Single women under age 35 have a median wealth of zero (data not shown) whereas their male counterparts have a median wealth of $3,800.
The triple whammy: Black, single with children.
5) Single women of color and women with children are more likely to have little or no wealth. The legacy of historical racist policies and practices that prevented people of color from building wealth still impact people of color today through inheritance. Single black and Hispanic women ages 18-64 have a median wealth of $100 and $120, respectively, which is less than 1% of the wealth of their same-race single male counterparts (with a median wealth of $7,900 and $9,730 respectively).
6) Nearly half of all single black and Hispanic women under age 65 have zero, or negative wealth (negative wealth occurs when the value of assets is lower than the value of debts). In contrast 23% of single white women, 33% of single black men and 38% of single Hispanic men have zero or negative wealth. Women of color are disproportionately targeted by sub-prime lenders.
7) Mothers face tremendous obstacles to building wealth, including the motherhood wage penalty, inadequate child support, and reduced access to the types of benefits (such as employer-sponsored retirement plans) that help people build wealth. Because of gender differences in responsibilities for care giving, women are more likely than men to work part-time or to leave the labor force, further reducing their income trajectories and limiting their retirement wealth.
Effects of the Gender Wealth Gap
While some of us may have inherited or married sufficient resources to be comfortable with these individualistic solutions, the fact is that the consequences of the wealth gap are enormous for many women.
Because we are more likely to use economic resources to benefit children than for long-term considerations for ourselves, women have less wealth to support ourselves in retirement or to help us weather economic, familial, and medical crises. Black and Hispanic women are less likely to marry and more likely to be single parents than white women, often due to racism which prevents black men from having sufficient economic stability to provide women with an economic harbor. So the racial wealth gap cannot close unless the gender wealth gap closes.
Women also have less bargaining power in marriage. Our financial dependency makes it more difficult for us to leave abusive relationships. We often are unsympathetic to the woman who would be stupid enough to stay with a batterer. When welfare payments were cut in the United States, the number of battered women rose significantly as many women, especially with children, were afraid to leave the battering spouse for fear they would end up on the street with no way to provide for their children. This is not unrealistic since single women with children in the household have a median wealth of $1,000, which is less than 3% of the median wealth of single men with children in the household ($35,300). and 22% of single men and 42% of single women with children living in the household have zero or negative wealth. Women of color fare even worse: 52% of black and 57% of Hispanic women with children in the household have zero or negative wealth.
In the end, we have to at least reflect how much our decisions, however unconsciously, continue be influenced by our economic dependence on men. This is in spite of all the T.V. hype about the new equity women have obtained.
A final word to the BFL (Bourgeois Feminist Left) settling for the individual solution:
Women perform 67% of the world’s working hours
Women earn 10% of the world’s income;
Women are 2/3 of the world’s illiterates; and
Women own less than 1% of the world’s property
Partial source List: Fact Sheet: Women and Wealth in the United States Distributed by Sociologists for Women in Society, Spring 2010, Prepared by Mariko Lin Chang, PhD* What is Wealth and Why Does it Matter?; Community Economic Development's Experts of Color Network; Chang, M. L. 2010. Shortchanged: Why women have less wealth and what can be done about it. NY: Oxford Univ. Press. Chang, M. L. “Lifting as we Climb: Women of Color, Wealth, and America’s Future.” Insight Center for Community Economic Development, Spring 2010. Conley, D. and M. Ryvicker. 2004. “The Price of Female Hardship: Gender, Inheritance, and Wealth Accumulation in the United States.” Journal of Income Distribution 13:41-56.)