While the Greek and Spanish tragedies played out last week, another longer-running systemic failure emerged into the spotlight
– the women-money-power saga.
Two studies – one from the University of Queensland, the other from Westpac – showed that more than 40 years of feminism, market forces, and two-income families had failed to change deeply ingrained social prejudices. The challenge for financial planners is how to help half the population when the barriers to financial independence do not seem to have shifted much in four decades.
Research from Westpac shows that more than one-fifth of Australian women who own their own small business are not a member of any superannuation fund. The study also shows that 53 per cent do not have a retirement plan to call their own.
In another study by Dr Terrance Fitzsimmons, from The University of Queensland’s Business School, he interviewed 31 female CEOs and 30 male CEO were interviewed. He concluded that, for women to become CEOs, they needed most, if not all, of the following:
A dramatic/traumatic childhood event which interrupted family life.
Growing up in a small-business family balancing the books, dealing with staffing, and developing self-resilience.
Their own children were born either very early (when the woman was between 18 to 23), or in the woman’s late 30s.
Full-time career path (because flexibility was the kiss of death as it was seen to be a lack of seriousness about career).
Grandparents were the carers for their children.
Their husbands were supportive.
Mentors were found quickly at work.
In stark contrast, Fitzsimmons found that male CEOs shared two traits: their fathers were professionals and their mothers stayed at home, and very frequently they captained their school’s football teams – thus developing goals, strategy, leadership, and teamwork.
His study not only teased out the factors which put women across the CEO finish line, but also examined the decision-making process behind the selections.
He concluded that change must start in school subjects offered to girls, and that those girls should then be encouraged to take line-roles at the start of their careers, not at the end.
He also suggests extending childcare hours beyond 7am to 6pm, and subsidising in-home childcare nannies.
What happened? It’s now 50 years since Gloria Steinem’s article, The Moral Disarmament of Betty Coed, was published in Esquire in 1962, followed by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique the next year. And then in 1970, Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch shocked, excited, inspired, dismayed.
Quite apart from the social benefits of equal female participation, financial advisers stand to make immediate benefits from encouraging such participation. If more women are earning more, then there are more potential clients needing advice.
While the squabbles about the best way to cure Greece, Spain et al of the Mediterranean lurgi may go on for years, we don’t have another four decades in which to bicker about Fitzsimmon’s methodology or have yet another government inquiry.
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