Life
It's not so long ago that women in the U.S. weren't allowed to get a credit card without their spouse or male relative's approval. Since then, conversations about women and finance have moved forward considerably (though there's still a cultural tendency to depict women as spendthrifts), and millennials are entering a world in which, on paper, money should be egalitarian. But many women know that this is hardly the case in practice.
Two new studies reveal that when it comes to our generation, women still don't have as much financial freedom as men, whether because of the gender pay gap, debt control, or their job happiness, and that is especially the case if they freelance. An analysis by the business management platform Honeybook looked at gender disparities in the income of their 50,000 self-employed clients, while the Wells Fargo 2017 Millennial Survey, interviewed 1771 millennials, all U.S. citizens between 20 and 36, 59 percent of whom were female. When looked at together, these statistics reveal that while women have more financial power than at any other point in history (at least in the U.S.), they still are stuck behind on key money-related factors that will hold them back for generations to come.
How Can We Solve The Freelance Gender Gap?
Self-employed women are seriously disadvantaged in comparative earnings; HoneyBook tracked gender disparities state by state, and found that self-employed women in Virginia make only 75 cents to the dollar versus male earnings, while Texan women only earn 82 cents to the dollar. With that disparity in place, attempts at savings are already handicapped.
Data on freelance work can be difficult to get, so this study is a valuable, although distressing, insight. Sigala points out that the HoneyBook study found "just how significant the pay gap was on a platform and creative economy with a female majority": in some places, it uncovered a pay gap of 68 cents to the dollar. That, she says, "is even higher than that of the finance and insurance industries, which represent the largest pay gap of any industry at 71 cents to the dollar." And the problem is compounded by the fact that women who freelance don't have an employer to help contribute to a 401(k) or retirement, meaning that they're in desperate need of higher levels of financial education and support to make up for it.
Freelancing women also face issues that haunt the finances of all millennial female earners: low proportions of savings (the Wells Fargo study found that women earning $88k per year only saved $675 per month, compared to $1k for men), and high student loan debt (women are holding around 67 percent of it in the U.S.). And it adds up. Millennial women have been found to have half the 401(k) savings of their male counterparts.
So what can you do? If you're a freelancer, Sigala says, do more comparison about your prices. "Female creatives need to charge more for their services," she says. If you're a millennial woman in a non-creative industry, be aware of your financial situation, get yourself some financial education, talk to your bank and your employer, and don't go self-employed unless you're willing to combat serious gender bias.