Recently in Financial Matters Category

So I watched CNN all day yesterday waiting for the vote on the bailout bill, but I noticed that even though I don't have any money to really lose (just the hope that they may not notice how much debt I have) I still felt stressed out. I also realized that when rich people lose money, it is a national crisis. But poor folk have trouble making ends meet every single day. Where is our news coverage?

The thing with money stress, for most of us, it is always there. So why this panic and media frenzy? Because the Dow Jones dropped? Or because we need to sensationalize everything and create fake scenarios to see how our to be presidents will react? Now, I am not saying that the financial crisis isn't real. Giving out money that doesn't exist will lead to problems. But this has problem didn't happen over night. As Naomi Klein would suggest,

[R]ight-wing governments use the shock generated by disasters or other crises to push through unpopular free-market policies when the population isn't in a position to oppose such programs.

via Chronicle Herald.

So instead of taking a jab at some shoddy economic analysis (which it seems like a lot of people are doing), I thought I would give you all a chance to share your thoughts on the economic crisis. I realized after watching the news all day I started to feel really panicked and started revisiting all my bills and stressing out about money. I also realized the spending on the war in Iraq is almost as much as the amount that is needed for the bailout.

Talk to me.

With a handy metaphor...

She is awesome.

(Transcripts aren't online yet -- I'll update with a link to the transcript tomorrow, after it's posted. Apologies for the delay!)

via Rachel.

We've cautioned before that "women voters" are not a monolithic bloc that can be won over with a single message. But as the economic downturn has hit women especially hard, it's easy to see why Barack Obama is trying to appeal to women by discussing the economy -- hitting on the issue of equal pay and highlighting Lilly Ledbetter's story.

Obama was an original co-sponsor of the legislation to reverse the result in Ledbetter's case; McCain opposes the bill because, he said in April, it "opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems." Well, yes, that would be the point of a law prohibiting pay discrimination.

The Obama campaign has asked Clinton to talk about Ledbetter when she campaigns for him. Obama, who didn't focus much on the issue during the primary campaign, hosted a meeting Monday on pay equity; the campaign released a memo contrasting Obama and McCain on women's issues. As I sat down to write this column, an e-mail arrived from the Democratic convention announcing that Ledbetter would be speaking there.

That's all well and good, but it's worth bringing up that it's tough for even the most impassioned campaign rhetoric to connect with real life. This piece from Salon last week, about a middle-class mother who takes her children to a soup kitchen for the first time, drives that point home. She describes her situation this way:

According to the NYTimes yesterday, women are now being hit as hard as men by a lack of jobs. This is not a new phenomenon but I understand what the article is getting at. It has gotten very competitive for the jobs that remain and an inability to find sustainable work has forced women into alternatives. This is in direct contrast to the idea of the "opt-out" revolution as some have termed it. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women aren't working because there aren't enough jobs.

When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home -- to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households.

But now, a different explanation is turning up in government data, in the research of a few economists and in a Congressional study, to be released Tuesday, that follows the women's story through the end of 2007.

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while.

The excuse for men is not usually that they have chosen to stay home, it is that they can't find work, whereas for women the explanation has always been she chose to stay home, not that she couldn't find a job.

For working class families the luxury of a stay at home mom has never been an option. It has in the past been an oversight of the women's movement that women merely want to enter the workforce because they have a right to. It is often that they need to.

Via.

For those in or around the NYC area, next week holds a couple of cool feminist events. On Wednesday the 16th, NOW NYC is holding a forum with financial planner Diane MacPhee where she'll be talking about the economy affects women and how to take a hold of your moneys.

That weekend on Saturday, July 19th, the inspiring Girls for Gender Equity are having their 3rd Annual Gender Equality Festival (check back on their site for more info) and a fundraiser, "Get Down 2 Get Up" with DJs spinning dope beats at Sputnik in Brooklyn. Click here for more info.

I'm sad to say I'll be on vacation joining Jess in Martha's Vineyard that week, but I highly recommend you join the summer feminist love.

This is big.

Less than a year after she was appointed by George Bush to lead the nation's family planning office, contraception-hating wingnut Susan Orr announced her resignation on Wednesday.

Her resignation shortly followed after the the Family Research Council, the organization she was formerly employed with (along with 80 other conservative groups) called on George Bush to reinstate a "domestic gag rule." Like the Global Gag Rule, this means that eligibility for Title X funds (which covers a huge chunk of our nation's family planning clinics) will require that centers don't refer patients for abortions or share facilities with abortion providers.

Title X is the only federal funding program that provides contraceptive services to low-income individuals, and Susan Orr's job was to watch over its management. The Family Research Council are working hella hard to get this "domestic gag rule" passed, and if Bush decides to leave us with this gift before he leaves office, a lot of clinics and a lot of low-income women and men are going to be fucked.

Check out RH Reality Check for more background on this, and take action here; tell Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt that the gag rule has no home here.

After leaving my last (very long) steady job, I was terrified about money. Because there’s no financial buffer but what I save. Even though I only have myself to support, it’s something I think about every day. That’s probably a result of knowing how hard my mom worked when I was growing up to give me everything I needed and some of the things I wanted. Really, I'm obsessive.

This is all only to say that I think about money a lot. So, discovering the blog Feminist Finance a few weeks ago was fantastic for me. The writer covers practical tips to get out of debt, to buying local produce, the importance of mentoring, and a lot more. If you’re part of a couple, she’s also got a lot of interesting content on dealing with joint financial lives.

A recent post notes a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit against a company founded by Michael Bloomberg. Check it out.

Deborah Brenner is the author of Women of the Vine and proprietor of Women of the Vine Cellars. While writing the book, Deborah and winemaker, Signe Zoller met and teamed up in 2006 to launch a first-of-its-kind wine company; bottled and produced by Women of the Vine Cellars.

From 2002-2005, Deborah ran her own marketing and public relations firm, SmallFishBigPond, and worked with such companies as Cinecitta Studios of Rome, Quantel, NBC and CNBC. Prior to that, Ms. Brenner spent over 16 years working in the film, television and the post production industries and was involved in four technology startups.

Here's Deborah...

And what a great way to teach our gals about finance during this holiday season o' debt - a credit card that doesn't run out.

Thanks to Amy for the link.

The Guttmacher Institute and Kaiser Family Foundation released a report yesterday on Medicaid’s role in family planning services in the U.S.; In short, it’s the largest source of public funding for family planning services in the country, serving millions of low-income women in contraceptive services.

But sadly, there is a downside. In 1976, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, legislation that excludes abortion from government-funded health care programs. As the report will show you, women enrolled in Medicaid and other programs for that matter receive coverage for family planning services including contraception, prenatal care, labor and delivery. But abortion isn’t included unless she is a victim of rape, incest or her life is in danger.

In other words, low-income women are forced to sacrifice rent or money for food to obtain an abortion, or are forced to continue the pregnancy and stay trapped in poverty. This makes me think about what Justice Bader Ginsburg said recently about the overturn of Roe v. Wade having "a devastating impact on poor women." But how much “choice� do they really have now when they don’t even have access?

The National Network of Abortion Funds leads a national campaign with a number of other advocacy groups which aims to repeal the Hyde Amendment. Their goal is to get 20,000 signatures delivered to Congress by January 2008. So go sign the petition to help give all women the access to choose.

A new study is showing that the HPV test is actually more accurate in detecting early signs of cervical cancer than taking a pap test:

The test for the human papillomavirus, or HPV, found 95 percent of cases in which women had potentially pre-cancerous changes in the cervix. This compared to 55 percent of Pap smears, the team at McGill University in Montreal found.

"We're proposing to go straight to the HPV test," said team leader Eduardo Franco.

While this finding is obviously a huge deal, it doesn't come without a price - literally; a pap test costs between $10 and $20, while the HPV test costs up to $90.

Between the vaccine and the test, HPV is creating quite a market. I guess the uninsured and low-income can, you know, just deal with the cancer.

Let's break this piece up a bit. Reinhard Krafft, head of private banking at Sal Oppenheim jr. & Cie, contends:

'If we service a family, you not only have a patriarch, you have the mother, daughter, son at the table. Whom are you talking to? Whole families.'

Translation: Because all families are hetero, nuclear and patriarchal, of course. The article continues:

Rich women, often widows or heirs, are seen as taking a larger role, but their involvement varies across countries.

And women bankers can sometimes be more perceptive when dealing with couples. 'In some cases what we find ... (that) if you have a couple a male adviser will oftentimes look to the male and have the whole discussion with the male and it could be that the female is the decision maker around this area or it could be even their (her) wealth that we are talking about," Junkans [Dean Junkans, chief investment officer at Wells Fargo's private client services division] said. Typically a female adviser will not make that mistake.'

Translation: Women bankers may make less sexist assumptions than male bankers, but let's just rephrase them as "relationship managers."

Any women in the banking world want to weigh in on this?

Big Sister is always watching you...

This is quite a gem for your Monday afternoon pleasure. Men's Daily News urges dying rich men to put "men's rights" organizations into their wills instead of their wives so they can't feed the oppressive feminist machine.

It's funny because it's sad.

Well, kinda. Women in their 20s are out-earning men their age in several major U.S. cities, including New York, Dallas, Chicago, Boston, and Minneapolis.

To summarize the various reasons for this offered in the Times article, it's likely because these are women who flock to cities after they graduate college, and because they have yet to get married or have kids. In other words, they're very much career-focused at this point in life. One social scientist also notes that there's likely to be less gender discrimination and more professional opportunities for women in big cities.

In 2005, 53 percent of women in their 20s working in New York were college graduates, compared with only 38 percent of men of that age. And many of those women are not marrying right after college, leaving them freer to focus on building careers, experts said.

“Citified college-women are more likely to be nonmarried and childless, compared with their suburban sisters, so they can and do devote themselves to their careers,� said Andrew Hacker, a Queens College sociologist and the author of “Mismatch: The Growing Gulf Between Men and Women.�

As the article also notes, this new data stands in contrast to national figures that show the wage gap is closing at a much slower rate than in the past two decades, and in some cases, even widening.

So I don't really expect this women-outearning-men trend to continue as these women age. Those who decide to have kids will be mommy-tracked after the birth of their first child. Many will get passed over for promotions, or decide to take a lower-track or part-time job. And the second child is often what causes women to leave the workforce altogether. The article summarizes,

It is not clear whether this is the front edge of a trend in which women will gradually move ahead of men in all age groups. Typically, women have fallen further behind men in earnings as they get older. That is because some women stop working altogether, work only part time or encounter a glass ceiling in promotions and raises.

Of course I hope that these trends don't play out for my generation of city-dwelling, go-getting women. But I can't say I'm very optimistic.

Queercents, founded and headed up by Nina Smith, is a personal finance blog serving the LGBT community. Launched in April 2006, Queercents is produced by a variety of writers, including Nina.

Nina has a strong background in finances and financial planning. By day she sells software and conducts her own real estate investments--fixing and selling properties for hefty profits--and by night she runs Queercents. Nina started blogging because she was looking for a creative outlet in her life.

Here's Nina...

I can't wait to see this movie. Health care is a major feminist issue and one of the main issues, for me, with regard to who I will be voting for. I know so many people that are uninsured, so many people that get hurt and can't do anything about, people that have gone bankrupt from getting into accidents, women that are raising babies and are uninsured. The lack of access to medical care in this country is truly deplorable.

via Racewire.

Thoughts?

From left to right: Sharon Kedar and Manisha Thakor.

Sharon Kedar and Manisha Thakor both have extensive experience in the financial services industry. At various points of their careers they have each worked as financial analysts, portfolio managers, and client servicing/marketing executives for leading investment management firms with billions of dollars in assets under management. Both Manisha and Sharon earned MBA degrees from Harvard Business School and are Chartered Financial Analyst (“CFA�) charterholders.

Manish and Sharon dedicate their newly released book, On My Own Two Feet: A Modern Girl's Guide to Personal Finance to all women.

Here's Manisha and Sharon...

Contributed by Kay Steiger

I attended a hearing this morning held by the House's Education and Labor Committee that examined the Paycheck Fairness Act on this, Equal Pay Day. Though the PFA has been introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro 10 times, this is the first time the committee held a hearing.

A report released yesterday by the American Association of University Women found that women one year out of a 4-year college earn 80 percent of what their male counterparts earn. When the report looks at women 10 years after graduation, women are earning 69 cents to every dollar that men earn. The most significant finding of the study, though, is that controlling for all factors, including "educational and occupational choices, as well as demographic and personal characteristics," an "unexplained" 5 percent gap exists one year out of college which widens to a 12 percent gap 10 years after college. Furthermore, as Catherine Hill, research director at AAUW testified, attending a highly-selective institution does little to boost a woman's pay, and educated women experience a greater pay gap than women overall.

Some more conservative committee members denied the credibility of the study, but as Rep. Carol Shea-Porter put it, the pay gap is "easily noticed by those who live it."

Cross-posted from Tapped.

I've long been annoyed with books marketed toward women that tell you that you aren't getting ahead financially because you can't stop spending money on your appearance. A perfect example is this piece in Sirens Magazine, which tut-tuts women for blowing their retirement savings on a beauty binge at Sephora: "It's a tough financial landscape we're facing, ladies, but apparently we’re more worried about our future wrinkles than our financial security."

But this week's TIME magazine lays waste to that myth. Fewer than 5% of Americans -- equal numbers of men and women -- are compulsive shoppers. There's only a $100 difference between single men's and women's median annual credit-card debt. And what about the argument that our spending on bikini waxes, footwear, and facial moisturizer is what's setting us back?

Women do spend $1,069--$246 more than men do--on clothing every year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2004-2005 Consumer Expenditure Survey. But that's chump change compared with what single men spend on car ownership ($846 more than single women), eating out ($752 more), alcoholic drinks ($280 more) and audiovisual gear ($143 more).

Authors like Suze Orman, who sell guilt-based financial self-help books, are aptly dubbed "financial frenemies." Because the real problem is not that women buy mascara and our male counterparts don't. It's that we make 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Forbes just released its list of international billionaires, which includes more women than ever before. And the ladies of IWF are crowing that this proves women don't need anti-discrimination or pay equity laws:

This is irrefutable proof that women don’t need government programs to help them make it in the business world—a fact our friends at NOW and similar organizations are unwilling to admit.

Except for the fact that every woman in the top 100 has inherited her wealth, not shattered the glass ceiling to earn her millions. The presence of these women on the Forbes list has next to nothing to do with the obstacles faced by average working women. And, in fact, it's still a great idea for government to pay attention to how these average women are faring in the workplace. Paris Hilton's riches are no excuse to ignore the issue. (Although she did film a season of "The Simple Life" attempting to be an office intern...see above artwork.)

Statistically, women make less money. Outside of "official" statistics, I can honestly say, almost all of my girlfriends are BROKE. They are amazing, brilliant and successful and they don't have any money. Whether it be for doing jobs that don't pay much but are meaningful or for being in school. The truth is women are often painted as overspenders, but we are rarely given credit as being EXTREMELY resourceful as most of us live off of very small amounts of money. Statistically smaller incomes coupled with more external pressures on how we should look (and as we all know looking good costs MONEY) it is quite the unfair dilemma, innit.

This woman is successfully living off of 12,000 dollars a year. Could you do it?

One of the many ways women implicitly or explicitly dodge the nefarious influence of global capitalism. These women have started a system of informal banking from lack of access to credit. The best part is it is community based.

Oumar Diene works at a Senegelese non-governmental organization and has studied informal banking in Yoff village, near Senegal's capital city of Dakar.

He explains that, instead of bank accounts, Senegalese have developed a variety of local strategies to save money and raise capital. Examples include what are known in local languages as maases, tontines, and tekks.

A maas is a support group based on local traditions. Where once that meant helping a sick neighbor plow his field, today this has evolved into various forms of economic support.

Tekks are a simpler form of informal saving, in which a group of children turn over their collected change to a trusted adult for safekeeping.

But it is the second method, tontines, that have become particularly popular among women on Carabane, Ndiaye explains.

She says groups of women formed to help each other, and her group of seventeen women contributed 1000 local francs per month. That is the equivalent of about two dollars.

The idea is a sort of group savings plan. Originally developed in Europe in the 1600s, members would contribute a sum to be invested jointly, and dividends were shared equally until the last surviving member took all.

Two dollars? Global capitol flow and the way it fails to reach *certain* people makes me sick. But still people do what they must to survive.

via VOA.

A new study shows that almost just as many men are complusive shoppers as women.

While “shopaholics,� or compulsive shoppers, have generally been perceived as women, research shows that while 6% of women are compulsive buyers, and 5.5% of men are compulsive buyers.

Additionally, women are more willing to to admit their addiction to shopping than men.

· “A college-educated woman with one child can easily pay a ‘Mommy tax’ (lost lifetime earnings) of $1 million.�

· “Consider that in the Army a family that makes below $28,000 annually pays no more than $43 per week for childcare, or around $2,000 annually. And then compare that to the national average cost of childcare, which can rise to $10,000 per year or more.�

· “In terms of infant mortality rates, the U.S. tied for 38th in the world with Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, and the United Arab Emirates in 2003.�

These are just some of the harsh realities Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner and Joan Blades researched and discuss in their book, The Motherhood Manifesto: What America’s Moms Want—And What to Do About It.

I spoke with Kristin from her home in Kirkland, Washington. Here’s Kristin…

Check out this ABC News article from yesterday that connects the Forbes madness with the gender pay gap in the U.S. and asks its readers, “Is there a war on women who work?�

I love it. ABC News has actually done quite a bit of Forbes ass-kicking since this story emerged. Kudos!

No shit. I love how these articles talk about women working like it happened yesterday, as though working class women haven't been working for a while (not to mention that work in the house is WORK). But let me not digress. This study found women are not feeling too good about their financial state.

When asked "How secure do you feel financially?" just 10 percent of the women respondents said they felt extremely secure, the survey found. Fifty-seven percent said they felt somewhat secure, and 33 percent said they didn't feel secure at all.

Women's feelings about money are important because they are increasingly likely to find themselves responsible for managing their own financial affairs. Some never marry, others outlive husbands and divorce is a common phenomenon in American society.

No kidding!

Asked what the barriers were to getting involved in managing savings and investments, more than 40 percent of the women surveyed said a lack of knowledge was the biggest impediment. Others said they found finances to be confusing or said they were too busy with families or their careers.

I don't find finances confusing. I just don't make any money. But I do think this is something young women need to be talking about. Women are never taught about finances because it is assumed they will marry someone who will worry about it. Now what if we aren't gonna do that?

via AP.

USA Today reports that there has been a growth in black female entrepreneurship. There have been more businesses started by young, black women since the government started counting (which quite frankly, was not very long ago), but anyways...

As women take entrepreneurship's lead, marketers from banks to tech companies are tapping black women as a new source of revenue. "It's a huge opportunity," says Angela Burt-Murray, editor in chief of Essence, a leading lifestyle magazine for black women.

Black women are launching companies for many of the same reasons spurring other women. They've gained corporate experience, but a glass ceiling keeps them from rising to the CEO's office. They're better educated. Self-employment offers more flexibility to care for children and aging parents.

Start-up costs have fallen as computers and other technologies grow cheaper. And the economy is shifting even more to retail and service businesses well-suited to corporate refugees.

Research from the Small Business Association found that black women owned 547,341 companies in 2002, up 75% from five years before. For men the jump was only 29%. It is predicted that soon more black women will be owning businesses then men. Now as mentioned above this is also due to the glass ceiling which stops black women (disproportionately) from being able to reach top corporate jobs.

But I prefer small businesses anyway.

via USA Today.

The Federal Pension Protection Act was signed by George W. Bush yesterday, in which two provisions will extend financial protections to same-sex couples.

Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese's statement on the bill:

“For gay couples and all Americans with non-spouse beneficiaries, death and taxes weren't only certain, but also times of great and unequal financial difficulty. . . In a challenging political climate, we persevered and helped to secure critical federal protections that will make difficult times for domestic partners a little easier."

While this is definitely good news, I can’t help anticipating that when gay marriage supporters come-a-knockin’, Georgie Porgie will use this to say, “But I gave you some rights!�

Here’s details on what the bill does exactly for the LGBTQQ community.

A study in Canada found that a large percentage of women end up financially insecure after the death of their husbands.

The study found that the adjusted income of senior widows dropped 13.2 per cent in the five years after the death of their husband, while the income of widowers increased by 5.8 per cent in the same period.

In addition to experiencing an overall decline in median family income, more widows also fell below the low-income threshold. Five years after the spouse's death, 8.7 per cent of women were living in poverty, compared with 5.1 per cent of men. Among seniors who did not live below the threshold before their spouse's death, 8 per cent of widows and 4.3 per cent of widowers had slipped into poverty five years later.

Many of the women within this particular generation (that had the option i.e. middle class or wealthier) did stay home and "take care of the family". As a result they rarely have a pension for themselves. This study will obviously look different as the proceeding generations, either by choice or necessity, most women DO work, but I wonder how different. And what about women that never marry or people that can't get married, like gays? Hm Hm, I guess they just stay poor. Interesting.
via GlobeandMail.com

This is disturbing. (And yes, I realize it's most likely a parody. Still gross.)

It’s called Plastic Assets, and gives you free breast implants with your credit card. Woohoo! Just what every gal wants in life, to go shopping and have fake tits! Let’s not forget a free lip injection for each friend you refer! (Yes, that’s an actual part of the deal.)

You can also choose a credit card that matches your new breast size, from B to DD, with a B card specialized for “Tweens and teens still growing in every way.”

Oh. My. God. They might as well just say that the prepubescent look is SO not hot. (So get those boobs before your friends do!)

Via Nerve.

Reuters had a “Top News Article” today on a British survey revealing that women spend a crapload of money on clothes they will never wear.

The home insurer Churchill found that, on average, women have 14 items of clothing in the back of their closets that they haven’t worn in the past year.

In the end, they will have spent more than $22,000 in a lifetime on clothes they will never wear.

They happened to very briefly mention that men on average had nine items of clothing in their closet they hadn’t worn.

While we could get deeper into this in terms of consumer culture and its effect on women, I think these dudes are trying to make a simple point here: We’re all obsessive shoppers that are shitty with money.

I would expand on this, but I have to run to the mall.

New research shows that for every year a woman in her 20s waits to have children, her lifetime earnings increase by 10 percent.

Part of that is because she'll earn higher wages—- about 3 percent higher—- for the rest of her life; the rest is because she'll work longer hours. For college-educated women, the effects are even bigger. For professional women, the effects are bigger yet—- for these women, the wage hike is not 3 percent, but 4.7 percent.

It isn't exactly news that women benefit financially when they decide to have a career first and children later. But the new study makes it easy to calculate exactly how much ground you're gaining or losing depending on when you choose to have kids.

Surprisingly, the research also shows that the availability of paid family leave has no effect on the "postponement premium." This contradicts other things I've read about family leave:

Research shows that leave policies covering childbirth and infant care significantly increase mothers’ return to work. Providing wage replacement during leave also has a significant effect on women working later into their pregnancies and returning to work faster. This increased time at work leads to higher earnings, both by avoiding periods without income and by keeping women on a career development track.

I'm not an economist or an expert, so I'm not sure what to believe.

But this was also surprising: Women who bore their first child after age 30 accumulated more wealth by age 60 than earlier child-bearers and childless women.

So if you want to make a lot of money, have children, and have them after age 30. Of course, if you're relying on someone else to pay the bills, none of this matters. Feel free to "opt out."

via Guardian Unlimited...

The figures, published 30 years after the introduction of the sex discrimination act, show that in the year to April 2005, women working full-time earned on average 17.2% less than their male colleagues.

"Every thinking person would agree that it's not right for women to be paid less than men - but that's what still happens even after 30 years of equal pay legislation," said Kate Bellamy, the society's senior policy officer.

Well not every thinking person, because there still is a wage gap. Either that or not every person thinks, which I buy.

Statistics show that with each child they have, women lose ground on wages when compared to non-mothers.

It's been dubbed the "Mommy Wage Gap":

For the first child a woman has, the wage differential in comparison to nonmothers is from 2 to 10 percent less.

For the second child, the gap is from 4 to 16 percent less than for women with no children.

It's not surprising that the primary caretaker's wages suffer as the family grows. But I can't stand the fact that this conversation never revolves around mothers' and fathers' respective levels of involvement in parenting.

Indeed, polling shows "American workers are divided as to which parent has to work harder to achieve work/life balance."

Oh, come on. If that's really true, then why isn't there a Daddy Wage Gap?

According to the BBC, a new report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC) found that individuals under 30 accounted for 15% of all personal bankruptcies in 2003-2004. That figure was almost double that of the 2001-2002 level.

The study also found that young women are more likely to declare themselves bankrupt. Though men outnumber in women in the number of bankruptcies by nearly 2 to 1, the PWC study found that the number of women in irreversible financial difficulty rose more than 45% over the last two years.

The main culprits? Expensive college educations, overuse of credit cards, and rising interest rates. As a seemingly professional academic, I know the feeling. (sigh). But debt is one area where I definitely *don’t* want the ladies catching with the men…

According to the BBC, a recent study by a British financial website found that women investors are consistently better at investing in shares than men.

In a sample of 100,000 portfolios, the average woman's share portfolio grew by 17%, while the average man's rose by just 11% (Over the same period, the British stock index climbed by 13%).

So what does this all mean? The study speculated that women were more successful because they favored a balanced portfolio-strategy instead of more risky stocks. In contrast, men tended to go for "fad" stocks and riskier investment strategies.

These kinds of observations are interesting. On the one hand, here we have the propagation of old gender norms, in new financial language (i.e. women are nurturers and caregivers who won't take risks).

On the other hand, if you have ever been approached by a meat-head financial services guy in a bar, it does not take a great mental leap to think that testosterone is directly linked to herd-mentalities and reckless behavior.

Thoughts?

-- Contributed by Brendan Sweeney

A new financial report found that current divorce settlements are damaging the retirement prospects of many women.

According to the BBC, only 1% of divorces involve a pension-sharing order (where a private or workplace pension is divided between a divorcing couple). These orders are designed to safeguard women who took time away from the office to raise children or care for family.

Malcolm Cuthbert, director of financial services at Killik, explains that, "After the matrimonial home, pensions are normally the biggest asset in a divorce settlement." Therefore, by overlooking the importance of integrating pensions into the asset-division process of a divorce settlement, many women are ending up *super* short-changed. (sigh).

My friend Gary recently sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal. (He knows just how to please me). The article is called "Girl Power as Boy Bashing: Evaluating the Latest Twist In the War of the Sexes," and before reading the piece, I groaned. I hate when people attribute things like cuts to men's college sports (or affirmative action) to girls "robbing" men of things they deserve. It's so tired to claim that women's progress is somehow meant to punish men.

Luckily, I was basically wrong. The article actually deals with the economics of the tween consumer market. (Shocking! An economic analysis from the Wall Street Journal!) The author shows that kids are now spending millions on products promoting the gender war. He points out the popularity of things like insult-laden clothing lines, confrontation-packed reality TV shows, and advertising that defines girl-power as boy-bashing.

Most of the girl power/boy-bashing argument focuses on the popularity of the David & Goliath "boys are stupid" clothing line, which is sold in 2,500 outlets and has an annual income of $100 million. As many of you know, the clothing line sells the infamous "Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them!", "Boys are smelly," and "Boys have cooties" t-shirts.

I think this is an interesting point. I don't think, as people quoted in the article suggest, that this trend is a product of Title IX, and shows girls trying to get a leg up by pushing boys down. That seems like a far-fetched and quite serious claim. I do think, however, that this trend is useless, obnoxious and, given that people can see it as a negative product of feminist advances, potentially damaging. I'm also tempted to wonder why this article essentially ignores the AMAZING amount of anti-woman products selling millions out there. But alas...

What do you think?

Check out the brief but good article from the Village Voice, "Where The Welfare Queens Went", a simple reminder of the failure of our current welfare reform system. Jarret Murphy writes:

"The people who left AFDC could be different from the folks who've recently enrolled in SSI or Food Stamps. And even if they are the same people, getting Food Stamps or SSI might be an improvement over receiving AFDC. But it doesn't seem like the 'self-sufficiency' the White House boasts about. It seems like welfare reform has done no better than welfare at curing the underlying problem, which, once upon a time, was called 'poverty.'"

Check out this article from CSMoniter.com on new possible legislation working its way through Congress that will make it much more difficult (and expensive) to declare bankruptcy. The bill, if passed, will hit women the hardest.

During a time that personal bankruptcies have become more common, the bill’s aim is to promote personal responsibility and reinstate more power to creditors. Even without the reform, 150,000 more women find themselves filing for bankruptcy than men per year. Single mothers are in the worst shape: they are fifty percent more likely to file for bankruptcy than married parents, and three times more likely than childless couples.

Fabulous. And it’s so refreshing to see that our government is taking care of this problem! Sigh.

Thanks to Michael for the article.

Meet Dr. Farrell. He's the asshole of the week that the NY Times Business Section decided to give in-depth coverage. He's a pseudo-scientist that believes he's finally figured out the gendered wage gap. His answer: women self-sabotage.

"Women, he believes, methodically engineer their own paltry pay. They choose psychically fulfilling jobs, like librarian or art historian, that attract enough applicants for the law of supply and demand to kick in and depress pay. They avoid well-paid but presumably risky work - hence, the paucity of women flying planes. And they tend to put in fewer hours than men - no small point, he says, because people who work 44 hours a week make almost twice as much as those who work 34 and are more likely to be promoted."

Ummmm, yeah. But where is the analysis on how women are pushed out of partnerships and senior level positions when they become pregnant. Or how women are *still* left tending to the majority of childcare and house work. And how no matter how many hours we put in, we will still *never* be eligible for the boys club. I don't care how you spin it, it is just plain *wrong* to blame women for their lower pay. (sigh).

Now I guess that because Dr. Farrell served on the board of NOW in the 1970's we're supposed to think that he's not so anti-feminist after all. That he's just presenting a new paradigm of economic analysis. Ummmm, yeah.

"It is O.K. to trade a fatter paycheck for more time with children and hobbies. Just recognize that society did not force the choice on you. 'Feel powerful and happy that you have control over your own life,' Dr. Farrell said. 'It's better than feeling like an angry victim of discrimination.'"

Well, you know what. I think anger is a pretty valuable tool. And rather than just accepting wage discrimination or blaming myself & other women for our low wages, I say that we keep giving the Dr. Farrells of the world hell.

One final thought--could the Times *really* not find anything better to publish than this propaganda? Well, hey, maybe in the post-Summers media climate, backlash is cool.

Although the majority of America contain a gender wage gap where women earn approximately 75 cents to men’s dollar, we find that about 15 random counties in the U.S. have a different case. In fact, women are the ones raking in the dough, reports NPR.

The counties are in the western part of U.S., like Kings County, Tex