“The best way to beat the patriarchy? Get rich.” This is the leitmotif of the American Tori Dunlap, author of the podcast Her first 100k which provides financial education lessons for women. THE financial feminism, which has existed for ten years abroad, aims to emancipate women through personal finance. Training, investment funds and financial products are becoming tools to enable women to exercise their economic power, reduce the wealth gap, and give them a voice in the markets.
In France, the trend is recent. podcasts on empowerment by finance are emerging, such as that of ViveSmedia or some newsletters, and feminists like Titiou Lecoq seized on the subject. At the start of 2023, two books are the precursors of a financial feminism à la française with concrete practical guides. It is To the money citizens! by Insaff El Hassini (author of the podcast my fair value) and Héloïse Bolle, founder of the financial advisory firm Sorrel and company ; And Develop your financial superpowers! written by Hélène Gherbi and Melvin Duveau, founders of the first French company of financial feminismFEMCA.
Money is the blind spot of our feminist tradition, which was built on the anti-capitalism of Marxist discourses, according to which wealth is a tool of exploitation. Authors d’Aux thunes citoyennes! put their feet in the dish: “The main tool of our emancipation is money”. And of all the rights that women have achieved, economic rights are those to which we still pay the least attention. Insaff El Hassini goes further: “the economic freedom of women announces and precedes their political freedom”. Hélène Gherbi often faces a skeptical public. “Feminism and money seem irreconcilable in France. There is this fear of the ‘big bad financial markets’, and for many it does not seem to be an emergency, whereas it is”, she explains.
80% of part-time jobs
We can prove him right. Ongoing debates have highlighted an income gap that rises to 40% at retirement age. 80% of part-time jobs are occupied by women. The number of single mothers is increasing (+24% in 2019), with a third below the poverty line. Women earn on average less than men, although these gaps are narrowing. In 2020, the 3919, an emergency number for victims of domestic violence, noted that 19% of callers were victims of economic violence. With shorter, less paid careers and higher life expectancy, women are more exposed to precariousness, including in earning a living.
To remedy this, feminist finance has two complementary angles of attack. First, encourage women to claim their due, at work and elsewhere, by equipping them with financial literacy and knowledge of their economic rights. Then, to help them concretely to enrich themselves beyond the salary, to reduce inequalities, but also to build up a pension that public services will struggle to provide.
Feeling of illegitimacy
In France, one of the highest taxed countries in the world, there is no personal finance education. A first book in 2019, The type of capital (La Découverte) by Sybille Gollac and Céline Bessière sounded the alarm: wage differences are just the tip of the iceberg. There is also the wealth (capital) gap, which increased from 9% to 16% from 1998 to 2015, and whose sources women do not always identify, they who are less likely to meet a legal professional. or finance in their lives. This inequality can be linked to the management of assets as a couple: for example Titiou Lecoq alert on expenses that do not create wealth, such as everyday shopping, often supported by women. According to Hélène Gherbi, “there is also real training to be done with finance professionals to identify the mechanisms of economic violence.”
“School prepares us for a job, but not to earn a living,” writes Insaff El Hassini, which reinforces a feeling of illegitimacy of women with money. A problem recognized internationally by theGLEC study in 2021 : two mixed groups with the same financial knowledge are questioned. The first group could answer with A and B, the second had a proposal C: “I don’t know”. Result ? Great for women when “I don’t know” isn’t available, half as good when it is. This lack of legitimacy makes them more reluctant to invest than men, further widening the wealth gap. It’s the “gender investing gap”, or investment gap. “We should all have a citizen kit of financial culture, explains Hélène Gherbi. In particular because investment is like a second ballot, we decide where the capital goes in the economy”. And not investing means leaving to men a domain that structures our world.
Money has no smell or sex
In France, less than 15% of women have one or more financial products. We are however no longer at the time of Marthe Hanau, who cross-dressed to enter the Paris Stock Exchange! If there is a place where discrimination does not exist, it is the markets, where money has neither smell nor sex. A solution that our feminists have been slow to consider, when it is literally the headquarters of what they call patriarchy.
And there are stereotypes to deconstruct: on average, women think you have to win 4000 dollars per month to invest. However, it is for the less fortunate or with broken careers that the placement would be most useful. It was to respond to this problem that the first investment platform dedicated to women was born in the United States in 2014: Ellevest. Its founder, Sallie Krawcheck, realized that the world of finance was not for them, robo-advisor operating for example without calculating career breaks. Today, his fund manages more than $1.5 billion. When will a French feminist fund?
1870 billion dollars of responsible investment
Some actors of financial feminism have popularized another way of investing: the goal-based approach (the goal-based approach). The financial product (PEA, life insurance) is not an end, but a means: to buy a roof, set up a company, have security savings to flee a violent home… So much the better if it attracts women, because we estimates that 66% of them would invest in companies whose values they share. Globally, if women invested at the same rate as men, it would represent 1870 billion dollars of responsible investment !
With this in mind, the “gender lens investing”, or gender-lens investing, which targets products and services for women, or companies that promote gender parity. Who knows, maybe we will be able to finance her retirement by making female entrepreneurship flourish, or research against endometriosis?
Financial freedom is a weapon of emancipation already available in the hands of women, without waiting for a fair retirement, perfect wage equality, or an upcoming election. But in France, money remains taboo. Gisèle Halimi warned as early as the 1970s: “it is in economic dependence that all the other dependencies of women have their sources.” Fifty years later, it was time to realize it!