Throughout history women’s economic contributions have been devalued, misattributed, or stolen.
By writing about my financial sheroes I hope to inspire you to cultivate your riches as they did, to honor their courage and celebrate their success.
The Gender Pay Gap Is Alive and Well
The latest Pew Research Report on the gender pay gap is hot off the presses, and there’s good news and bad news.
The good news?
The gap has narrowed a lot since 1982, down from a whopping 35 cents to 18 cents.
The bad news?
The gap hasn’t budged much in 20 years, when women earned 80 cents for every dollar men earned. It’s now 82 cents.
The most interesting factoid I gleaned is the big difference of opinion between men and women about the source of the gender gap, regardless of politics.
Overall, according to the Pew study “women are much more likely than men (61% vs. 37%) to say a major reason for the gap is that employers treat women differently.”
Here’s the breakdown by gender and political party of the percentage surveyed who believe the wage gap:
76% of Democratic women vs. 59% of Democratic men
43% of Republican women vs. 18% of Republican men
Maybe we should believe the ones who feel the pay gap is the result of their employers treating them differently? a.k.a. Sexism? (my words).
Data glutton? Insatiably curious, or just pissed off? Read more about the gender wage gap here.
Madame Stephanie St. Clair: The Numbers Queen of Harlem
Not all female money makers operate(d) by the rules.
Madame Stephanie St. Clair was known as The Numbers Queen of Harlem. Starting in 1923, she built an illegal lottery “policy” into a cash machine that earned her $200,000 a year ($3.4 million in today’s dollars) per year.
But she was more than a numbers runner – she was an activist who fought back, risking her life in the process.
She took ads to inform the New York black community of their rights and encouraged them to refuse illegal searches. She helped found The French Legal Society, which provided immigrants with support.
St. Clair fought against police corruption targeting black-owned businesses, and led a campaign against white gangster Dutch Schultz’ incursions into Harlem.
Schultz, notoriously violent, put a hit out on St. Clair. Nevertheless, she persisted, organizing resistance among Black policy bankers and sometimes taking the law into her own hands.
She may not have been legal, but she was fearless.
When Schultz lay dying in a hospital from a gunshot wound, she sent him a telegram: “As ye sow, so shall you reap,” signed “Madame Queen.”
Though she later dropped out from the headlines St. Clair went on to continued business success, presumably through more legitimate means.
¹𝖦𝖾𝗋𝗌𝗁𝗈𝗇, 𝖫𝗂𝗏𝗂𝖺. “𝖬𝖺𝖽𝖺𝗆𝖾 𝖲𝗍𝖾𝗉𝗁𝖺𝗇𝗂𝖾 𝖲𝗍. 𝖢𝗅𝖺𝗂𝗋: 𝖭𝗎𝗆𝖻𝖾𝗋𝗌 𝖰𝗎𝖾𝖾𝗇 𝗈𝖿 𝖧𝖺𝗋𝗅𝖾𝗆.” 𝘑𝘚𝘛𝘖𝘙 𝘋𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘺, 𝟤𝟥 𝖥𝖾𝖻. 𝟤𝟢𝟤𝟣.
Photo credit: Arlenechang, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Women Are Now Signing Off on U.S. Legal Tender
A lot goes into producing the greenbacks in your wallet, including the signatures of Janet Yellen, the Secretary of the Treasury, and Lynn Roberge Malerba, U.S. Treasurer.
These signatures represent a lot of firsts:
Yellen is the first female Secretary of the Treasury.
Malerba, Lifetime Chief of the Mohegan tribe, is the first Native American to serve as U.S. Treasurer.
Their signatures represent the first time two women’s signatures are on our currency.
Celebrate these milestones when you find yourself clutching a Yellen/Malerba bill.
It’s important, and Yellen tells us why:
“Currency is something we use and we touch every day. And when done right, it can tell us who we are, what we value, and what is possible,” she said.
Today is not about me, or Lynn, new signatures on our currency. It’s about our collective work to create a stronger and more inclusive economy. At the end of the day, the field of economics is not about numbers or theory. It is about improving the lives of ordinary people.”¹
¹Wallace, Alicia. “Yellen sees her signature printed on US bills for the first time.” 𝘊𝘕𝘕, 8 Dec. 2022
Equal Credit Opportunity Act
Up until 1974 in the U.S., a single, widowed, or divorced woman had to bring a man to cosign any credit application, regardless of her wealth or income.
It took the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act a mere 49 years ago for a woman’s creditworthiness to be based on something other than her genitals.
By contrast, in 3100 BCE Egypt, women had equal financial rights to men.
Valuing Women’s Work
Women’s labor is often unpaid, undervalued, prescribed, and forgotten.
Whatever the prevailing cultural norms, one thing is for sure, all the “rules” around a woman’s role in the workforce shatter when there’s a labor shortage. It suddenly becomes acceptable, patriotic even, for women once confined to the home to join the paid workforce.
Look no further than WWII and Rosie the Riveter.
It’s a common belief that in hunter-gathering societies of yore, women gathered, and men did the hunting. Never mind the value of keeping everyday starvation at bay, the glory lay with the men and the spoils of the hunt.
Except that women hunted in almost equal numbers as men.
At least in pre-historic Americas, the archeological record suggests that 30 to 50 percent of women were big game hunters. When scientists look at the evidence objectively (DNA!) and don’t make gendered assumptions about skeletons buried with hunting tools or weapons (warriors, too!), we have proof of what we’ve known all along:
Women have always brought home the bacon too.
It’s just been hard to get the credit for that or, for that matter, all the domestic work that makes bacon-bringing possible.
Be proud of your contribution, whether paid or unpaid. Demand the respect you deserve. You are descended from hunters and riveters. You are more than a labor booty call from society.
How to Make Money by Making Women’s Lives Easier
It’s not a woman-friendly world.
Automobile safety standards were developed with crash test dummies based on male dimensions. Today women are 73% more likely to be severely injured than men in a car crash as a result.
Clinical trials excluded women on the unsubstantiated belief hormonal fluctuations would make results hard to study. Women have suffered (and still suffer) from more side effects, adverse events, and incorrect dosing than men as a result.
In a world whose default standards are male-centric, creating products designed for half the population (a.k.a. women) is a no-brainer.
And that’s just what Heather Hasson and Trina Spear did.
They founded FIGS, the first publicly traded company with two women co-founders. They learned that existing medical scrubs were 1) uncomfortable to wear for 12 to 16 hours a day and 2) sold in inconveniently located shops far from the hospital.
They made healthcare workers’ (~80% female) lives a little easier by selling comfortable workwear, direct-to-consumer.
FIGS was launched in 2013 and, by 2020, had $263 million in sales. They went public a year later.
Here’s the mindset that created wealth and ease for women:
“My lens was, what problems can I solve and how do I make this world better? I wake up every single day thinking about health care professionals and: how do we support them, how do we empower them, how do we celebrate them.”¹ — Heather Hasson
To learn more about FIGS click here.
¹ Favot, Sarah. “ ‘We’ve Branded an Unbranded Industry’ FIGS Co-CEOs Trina Spear and Heather Hasson on Their Epic IPO.” 𝘥𝘰𝘵.𝘓𝘈, 25 June 2021
Trina Spears (left) and Heather Hasson (right) of FIGS.
Hetty Green: The Witch of Wall Street
Hetty Green understood the power of compounding modest returns, living within one’s means (OK, she was a little extra in the frugality department), and thorough research (“Before deciding on an investment, I seek out every kind of information about it.”¹).
Her investment advice?
“I buy when things are low, and nobody wants them. I keep them until they go up, and people are crazy to get them. That is, I believe, the secret of all successful business.”¹
When it came to women and money, she was way ahead of her time.
“It is the duty of every woman, I believe, to learn to take care of her own business affairs.”¹
Want help doing your duty? Sign up for my weekly letter on Cultivating Your Riches. I can’t guarantee Hetty Green-like returns, but you will learn about sound investing strategies and develop confidence in your financial acumen.
To learn more about Hetty Green click here.
¹ 𝖶𝖺𝗅𝗅𝖺𝖼𝗁, 𝖩𝖺𝗇𝖾𝗍 (𝟤𝟢𝟣𝟤). 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘙𝘪𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘞𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢: 𝘏𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘺 𝘎𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘈𝘨𝘦.