10 women speak up about money, work and womanhood

On Blackness, transness, care taking, anti-fat bias, ‘having it all’ and more in this kickoff to the Summer of Women & Money

Welcome to the Summer of Women & Money!

Three years ago, in the summer of 2021, I launched this site with a call for essays from women to share their money stories. My goal was to make Healthy Rich a space for the voices we don’t hear enough in personal finance media — and the women did not disappoint! I got submissions from hundreds of women from all over the world, and I published the top essays here to kick off this new kind of conversation about money.

Since then, this newsletter has grown by thousands of readers, and I need you all to read the beautiful, thought-provoking, heart-wrenching stories these women shared. I’ll be republishing their essays throughout the summer, but I’m starting this week with a round up of quotes, some moments that hit me the hardest — you’ll see why these stories need to be resurfaced!

Work and Black womanhood

My mother taught me I had two strikes against me: I am Black and I am a woman. White folk, as my mother and grandma put it, would look at these identities as a package deal. The plight and stereotypes attached to Black women are different from those of any other woman. To combat that, my mother taught us to be “productive members of society.”

Get a degree, get a job, be good.

Black women are socialized to believe our value is in our output. That our value is in how well we serve other people. So, of course, that mindset will bleed into making money.

– Kiana Blaylock, Work and Black womanhood: rejecting the role of provider

Photo by Clarke Sanders on Unsplash

Being the good daughter

Without a family, I’d have been on the streets with my baby. By following Mom’s directives, I could fit a few college classes around my work schedule and still earn my degree — I wanted English, but my mother decided on early childhood education. So, I double-majored on scholarships and student loans. My child and I were very fortunate indeed.

Except the feelings of guilt and encumbrance established a precedent.

When I was offered a well-paid dream job, I couldn’t take it because the family needed me too much. As the daughter, I believed I must give up those unrealistic dreams for the good of the whole.

— Wendy Strain, The job of the daughter

Finding your place as a caretaker in a man’s world

At my first Women’s Initiative event, a partner (who happened to be a woman) talked to us about her career path. She talked about the opportunities she’d had and her experiences at our company.

Most of the words in this memory are a blur, but somewhere in the middle of a question-and-answer session, she mentioned she never wanted to be the person to bring baked goods to a team meeting. That’s who she was at home, she said, and she absolutely did not want to be seen as that person when she walked through those oversized glass doors to begin her work day.

I was heartbroken.

All these years, I’d built my personal brand around being somebody who was there for others — with a shoulder to cry on, a piece of advice or a homemade cookie. Would this be bad for my career? Is it something I needed to check at the door?

— Chrystina Cappello, Once a hostess, always a hostess: on being the work ‘mom’

Self-worth and work as a trans woman

My identity as a trans woman has naturally affected my feelings of self-worth. This is mostly because of the way I look, but also because it’s so much easier to overwhelm my agency because it is based on a simplified premise that I exist neither here nor there, sexually, and as such, my voice seems to come across as inauthentic and suspect.

Whether it’s the general respect I'd like from my students — which I don't expect to come intrinsically — or the open-mindedness I've come to value from my cis colleagues — but don't harangue them for — my relationship with work and money has always been necessary but distant.

— Ess Aye, What I learned about my pay as a trans high school teacher in India

Being told you should be ‘grateful’

Mine is a familiar story: poor, never having a father, growing up on the streets. And I lost my mother before reaching my 12th birthday. Circumstances that made simple things like graduating from high school some grand accomplishment in my neighborhood.

But the lie always told to me was: If you work hard and choose wisely, you too will be successful. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Believe in yourself. Have faith.

We’ve all heard the cliches, always ending with some version of: You’re not being grateful enough. As if being grateful had something to do with being successful! Trust me, poor folk are the most grateful people on the planet. Give someone $100 who barely has enough to get by, and watch that joy, that grace, that love of the extra cash!

Don’t talk to me about gratitude when we’re talking about basic necessities. There is no quid pro quo. Being grateful has nothing to do with your success. And I love Oprah like everyone else, and gratefulness is a thing we should all be and practice, like having good manners; but being grateful has nothing to do with getting what you want in life.

— Carmen Lezeth Suarez, I know better now: what Kimberly Latrice Jones taught me about Black finance

Gen X’s promise of ‘having it all’

As a white, middle-class Gen X woman, I fell somewhere between June Cleaver and Janis Joplin, between Phyllis Schlafly and Gloria Steinem, between white-only second-wave feminism, and Black and brown-led intersectional inclusion. Women from my generation were subjected to and heavily influenced by a zeitgeist that can be summed up by the iconic ear worm propaganda jingle of our childhoods: “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and never ever let you forget you’re a man, ‘cuz I’m a woman…”

We were told women could have it all: career, sexuality and family. But, in truth, “having it all” offered us up (in a pan, like our brain on drugs) to our own oppression. We marched at Take Back the Night rallies, but we still had to watch Anita Hill talk with outsized amounts of dignity about degrading sexual harassment. We boycotted grapes, but Bill Clinton still played his saxophone on stage as he became our next philanderer-in-chief, the signer of NAFTA and the financier of a new decade of mass incarceration.

We graduated college in a recession. Even with the advantage of a degree, I couldn’t find a job washing dishes.

— Nancy Slavin, Work and womanhood in Generation X

Anti-fat bias in hiring

“Some of the committee members didn’t think that you dressed professionally enough for the job,” he said. “Everyone in the department was impressed by your presentation. They just had concerns about how you’d present yourself in the office.”

I felt embarrassed, reimagining my interview outfits: I wore a black high-waisted dress, stockings, and a tailored suit jacket. In my final interview, my dress had buttons down the front. Being a 38DD chest size, I’d placed small, black safety pins behind the buttons to reinforce their fastenings, so they wouldn’t bust open during the interview. Had they gapped anyway, revealing my cleavage? Did it seem juvenile, that perhaps I hadn’t worn a dress in my size?

Or was being a larger curvy woman too dangerous for the workplace?

— Rachel Kolman, My curves lost me a job

Living with the expectations of an immigrant family

“I want to be rich when I grow up.”

Admittedly, this isn’t the most inspiring thing a child could say. An answer like that doesn’t compare to the children who wished to be doctors, lawyers and educators. But my dream job was whatever job would let me live lavishly. I nodded my head fervently at any position that could bring me the most money.

From a young age, I’ve had this symbiotic relationship with the dead presidents in my pocket. In fact, I would venture to say everybody in my family had that relationship with money. How else would a Haitian immigrant family make it in America? Money was the vehicle necessary to take you where you wanted to be in life, whether you liked it or not.

— Raniah Jeanlys, “I want to be rich when I grow up” — The expectations on a Black immigrant girl

When the breadwinner pulls the rug out from under you

I was the sole manager of every penny that came into the home, and I managed my husband’s penchant for overspending by learning to embrace the thrill of thrift store and yard sale finds. The kids and I developed a sense of style and fun on the cheap, and we knew of no other way of life… until COVID-19 locked the gears of our lives.

Initially, the house tip-toed around my spouse’s at-home work presence, but the rest of us had school to accomplish as well, so the adjustment period was tough. All funds went toward toilet paper and groceries, as our food costs soared with eight people home all day, every day. My husband, who hadn’t checked the bank account balance for two decades, became savings-obsessed and began to question what I’d been doing with “his” money.

The possessive pronoun hit me like a slap to my face. I wondered how I’d been so blind to his true sentiments. Sure, he provided, but I managed. I’d never kept him from the account; he’d simply trusted me implicitly… until he, apparently, did not.

— AE Morgan, I was a destitute woman all along

Returning to work after a break to have a child

Getting back into the workplace after having a child is a rough experience. It’s nerve-wracking, humiliating, demeaning. Most women, myself included, opt to ease themselves back into things, starting back a few days a week. When you have a job to return to, that’s usually simple enough to negotiate — even if it means you’re not getting paid anywhere near as much, and, as a result, not earning anywhere near as much to contribute to your retirement.

But I didn't have a job to return to, so I was in for a real treat. I spent hours combing the job ads, trying in vain to find something close to home with flexible hours. Then I had to apply for those jobs. I can't remember how many I applied for, but it was in the dozens.

Part of the job application process inevitably involved sending out my CV. Despite some excellent qualifications, all I could see was a glaring hole from when I was on my enforced maternity leave, and in my eyes, it dulled any glimmer my extensive experience might have had.

— Jess Carey, Woman, mother, financially inferior

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Your turn!

How has your identity as a woman impacted your relationship with work and money? Do any of these writers’ experiences ring true for you? Do any of them surprise you? Share your thoughts in the comments!