The Door comments to the oversized Alice: "Simply impassible!"
Alice replies: "Why don't you mean impossible?"
Door: "No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible!"
In reading my blog you'll see one feminist theme reoccur time and again- women's agency- specifically the evolution of our command of financial and investment knowledge and our investment behavior. Or put another way - how do we get the key to the room where it all happens?
I'm optimistic that the financial world - which was built around the preferences of men for men - is changing. Just as Alice in Wonderland found a way through the tiny door to the beautiful garden beyond, the women of today are making greater inroads through the doors of financial institutions.
Quite often our "financial identities" (myself included) have taken shape in settings that were in some respects prejudicial to our interests. Institutions and practices throughout history have subordinated women - albeit in different degrees at different times and in different places. I like looking back to remind myself that we've come a long way. Unfortunately we're not quite 'there' yet!
Beginning in the late nineteenth century a small number of financial institutions in the U.S.. - mostly in New York, Chicago and Washington - started "women's departments". Where the wealthy classes were catered to, women were offered separate spaces to "escape the hustle and bustle of the busy street or jostling by busy men in the banking rooms. The rooms included divans, upholstered chairs, writing tables and flowers. A 1932 flyer for the Fifth Avenue Bank in New York City described a 'comfortable and completely appointed reception room warmed in the chilly days by an open fire and attended by a maid."
Not only did the banks offer women their own space, they offered to help women balance their bank accounts and determine their budgets. In most cases, the employees who met these needs were men - apparently the preferred person was the 'courtly gentleman who had a way with the ladies'.
However, there was little evidence that financial institutions really wanted to deal with women. The financial and general press of the times stressed the inconvenience to male bankers of handling the accounts. There were constant jokes about women's inability to handle money, especially cheques and a sense in the subsequent reminiscences of one banker that banks 'often classified women's accounts as a nuisance'. Women talked too much and took too long to tell their story.
How do things look today? Despite all the obvious wealth women possess, a recent BMO survey reports that 73% of women are "unhappy" with the financial services industry; 80% of women switch advisors within a year of their husbands' death and 87% of women surveyed say they cannot find one they can connect with.
According to Boston Consulting, of all the industries that affect women's daily lives, women around the world have identified the financial services industry as the one they are most dissatisfied with. As a financial advisor for three decades I've heard their dissatisfaction first hand. Women who found their way to my door shared some incredible stories about how they were poorly treated by their previous advisors.
I'm asked all the time, 'Do women's attitudes towards money really differ from men?' And I say yes, but.... we're different in many ways, but in just as many ways we are the same. Looking at the issues through gender-filtered lenses is no longer the answer to the issues of the cultural reality women experience today in the world of finance.
Why do I say I'm optimistic that the financial industry is evolving? Money talks and the advent of the wealthy female client who walks through the door with significant money to invest has become a force to make the investment industry sit up and take seriously.
"People say that money is not the key to happiness but I always figured if you have enough money you can have a key made."
Joan Rivers