Are We Still Wearing Our Grannie’s Panties?

I’m so all about girl-power. I love being a strong woman and I love seeing other strong women kicking ass and taking names. When I hear stories of young women like Malala Yousafzai and Emma Watson speaking out on behalf of the empowerment of women I get absolutely giddy. When Beyoncé belts out a song about girls running the world I’m singing right along at the top of my lungs. So I felt sucker punched this last month when two studies came out showing that women still have some ground to cover when it comes to being truly independent women.

In a recent Pew Research Center Survey of never been married women the number one most attractive characteristic in a potential mate – by a lot – was having steady employment. Seventy-eight percent of the women surveyed said it was very important to them. It outranked the next most important factor – having similar ideas about child rearing – by eight percentage points.
Men, on the other hand, really didn’t care if their potential spouse worked. Only forty-six percent said it was important that their future wives had steady employment. Seems like women still desire a mate who provides financially while men still feel comfortable being in that role.

The second study that gave me that knot in the stomach feeling involves the attitudes women have about investing. I was at a seminar and the speaker touched on a study done by Russell Investments where they compared the attitudes of “Gen X” women (those born during the early sixties to the early eighties) to those of women of the “Silent Generation” (women born during the Great Depression and World War II). The researchers were curious to see how much women’s attitudes toward finances had shifted from our grandmother’s generation to those of us who grew up in a post Gloria Steinem world.

Frighteningly the answer was not much.

Turns out when both groups of women were asked how knowledgable they felt when it came to making investment decisions for their household, most women in both age groups put themselves into the “little to no knowledge” category. And the spread wasn’t too wide between the age groups – 66% for the Silent Generation and 49% for the Gen Xers. Crazy, right?

So what does this all mean? My interpretation of these studies is that us post-feminism women still want a partner who can both provide and guide us financially. That the gender stereotypes of our grandmothers’ generation are frighteningly close to those most of us hold today. And I don’t mean this as a looking down from my high horse judgement. I’m hoping it is a call to action. And that action is I want to see us Gen X women being brave – to stop being afraid of the “f” word: finances.

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