【每日邮报】Why do some women still think it's OK to rely on men to pay their way? ……

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Why do some women still think it's OK to rely on men to pay their way? Real freedom is having your own bank account
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/femail/article-1196196/Why-women-think-OK-rely-men-pay-way-Real-freedom-having-bank-account.html
By Linda Kelsey     Last updated at 9:39 AM on 29th June 2009


Money talks: Linda's friends seemed horrified that she keeps up with the business and money section and has retained her financial independence

Do smart girls REALLY marry for money?

Bank on it: Husbands and wives should have their own bank accounts as well as a joint house account in order to enjoy some independence

Some women are financial dependent on their partners



LINDA KELSEY says that contrary to popular belief, smart girls DON'T marry for money...
We were discussing an article in the papers when I asked: 'So, disregarding the preferences of husbands, which bits of the Sundays do you chuck straight out?

'Sport,' came the unanimous reply. 'Motoring,' said one of the women, and we all nodded, eyebrows raised at the silliness of men and their obsession with cars. 'Business and money,' suggested another. More nods. Except from my direction.

'But I always read the business and money sections,' I said. The women looked at me like I'd put in an unscheduled appearance from out of space.

'Like, why?' asked one. 'Because business tells me so much about the world and what's happening in it,' I replied a little defensively, 'especially during this recession. And money, on a much more personal level, informs me about how to cope.'

One of the women actually started fluttering her fingers in front of her face, like a Victorian lady having a touch of the vapours. 'Business and money,' she sighed, twitching her nose in distaste, 'They're like Mandarin to me, a foreign language I have no wish to learn.'



She took a moment to further recover herself, then turned her back on us and left the group.

When you're going through separation and divorce, as I am right now, money necessarily looms large. But I've been fascinated to see how out of kilter I seem to be in relation to my female peers in similar circumstances.

Talking to single women in their 40s, 50s and 60s about what they might look for in a future relationship, time and again I have heard the response: 'Someone who will look after me.'

The first time I heard this I thought the person concerned meant someone who would give her emotional support, but what she meant was money.

'Well, you wouldn't want to get involved with someone who hadn't paid off his mortgage, would you?' she said.

'I'd like to know what was in his pension pot,' said another.

'I'm 58 and my job prospects aren't great,' said my friend Kate, 'so his had better be. I want to be comfortable in my old age, not to have to struggle. What are you looking for, Linda?'

I was tempted to reply: 'Not to be a character in a Jane Austen novel.' Virginia Woolf famously said that for a woman to write fiction or poetry 'it is necessary to have £500 a year and a room with a lock on the door'.

These days, as a writer, I relate particularly to the notion of the lock. Interruptions from kids/dogs/pizza delivery boys who want the flat upstairs rather than mine play havoc with creativity.

But even when I first heard those words, around the time I went to university in 1969, it was the £500 that interested me more than the lock.

Woolf, back in the Twenties, had been lucky to be left a legacy by an aunt, but it was the idea behind what Woolf said, the notion of financial independence as one of the keys to women's freedom that has always stayed with me.

I grew up as the daughter of a successful businessman and a housewife mother. Many of my peers were destined to marry young to doctors/ lawyers/company directors and were not especially encouraged to take their careers seriously.

They'd most likely give up work after marriage and certainly after their children were born.

But when I think of the day I dropped out of college, just three terms after taking up a place at Warwick University to read history, I can still hear my dad's words ringing in my ears. 'Come home if you're not happy. But if you think you're going to sit on your backside for a single minute, think again, girl. You'll go out, you'll get a job.' And of course I did. By the time I went to work on Cosmopolitan magazine, at the age of 20, I had sussed out one thing from which I've never steered off course.

That the key to freedom was not about sleeping with, free of guilt, as many men as I fancied or beating a male candidate to become chairman of the board, but economic independence.

I vowed to myself that I would never be financially dependent on a man. That even if any future partner would earn more than me, I would always earn enough (or make sure I had enough stashed away) to give me an escape route if things went wrong.

It's no surprise that the main reason women stick with violent or emotionally abusive men is because they can't see a financial way out.

Throughout a 25-year relationship with the man from whom I am now separated, we always retained separate bank accounts plus a joint account for the mortgage.

I could spend exactly what I liked on clothes and other extravagances without giving my partner a heart attack, but he could also spend what he wanted on skiing trips, gliding lessons, or whatever. We never kept a tally of who spent what, it just seemed to work out.

Judy Lever, one half of the female duo behind Blooming Marvellous, the mother-and-baby goods company which was sold after 22 successful years of trading, has always been money-savvy. She says: 'It was important to me to be independently comfortable. It wasn't a negative thing towards men, but about one's sense of self-worth.'

She has been with her partner for 40 years and they have two grown-up daughters.

'I suppose never marrying may have made a difference in that perhaps you do keep your independence more specifically, but from day one we had a joint account into which we paid equal amounts for things to do with the home, mortgage, etc., and including things like going out for dinner,' she says. 'If one of us paid for a meal we'd write it in a cash book, but all the personal stuff we paid for ourselves out of our own individual accounts.'

But not everyone agrees that staying financially independent is the best route.

Smart Girls Marry Money is the name of a mercifully short book by Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake which has been making great waves in the U.S., where its authors live, and which I wanted to hurl at the wall.

It poses the question: 'Why does society applaud a woman who falls for a guy's big blue eyes yet denounce one who chooses a man with a big green bankroll?' And it concludes that ' mercenary' marriages make the most sense for future happiness because should they end in divorce, women rarely bounce back professionally or financially as easily as men. But the authors neglect to realise that money is power, and that without it women will once again revert to becoming personal chattels.

There's a worrying trend here for girls to aspire to the WAG culture and the belief that bagging a footballer is the route to a fulfilled life. What they don't seem to realise is that even the really successful WAGs work their butts off.

Despite the lorry loads of designer shopping, Victoria Beckham, Cheryl Cole, even Coleen Rooney do a helluva lot more on a daily basis than sell the rights of their life to OK! magazine.

I suppose we pioneering feminists of the do-it-all generation haven't always been the role models we intended to be to our now grown-up daughters.

A friend of mine, who holds a senior role in book publishing, told me of her horror when her daughter, who works for a mental health charity and who has just put down a deposit on a flat with her boyfriend, said. 'I can't be doing with all that money stuff, it does my head in. But Ben really gets it, so I leave it to him.'

Economic downturn or not, nowadays most women return, of necessity, to the workplace after having children. For Karen Mattison, founder of Women Like Us, which offers both a coaching and recruitment service to mums who want to get back into the workforce on a parttime or flexible basis, confidence is key.

'The longer a woman has been out of the workplace, the more she is likely to lose her sense of self-value. For too long women having been trading down skills for flexibility, and have been willing to take on jobs for which they are overqualified and paid less. They've not had the confidence to say I want the same job as before but I want it part-time.'

But Karen sees a silver lining in the recession cloud for women who want to work part-time. Employers have been coming to her willing to pay more for staff with experience over someone straight out of university.

'They see the business benefit of taking on a woman with the right skill levels in a more flexible way,' she says. 'As more senior part-time positions become available, women will become less grateful, and will come more to expect it and the money that should go with it.' When I was in my 20s, I heard about an advertising agency which placed an ad in a paper for a creative position.

The salary was attractive but there was almost no response from women candidates. Then a bright spark at the agency had the idea of re-advertising the exact same position but with a lower salary.

Dozens of women immediately replied. Plus ca change, I fear.

If women continue to undervalue themselves, if they persist in the view that the nitty gritty of finance is dull or difficult and that bagging a rich mate to deal with it for them is much better, then we will be killing off all the benefits feminism had to offer.

I don't get a kick from juggling savings between accounts to ensure a slightly less pathetic return on my investments, or jump for joy when my few shares start to recover before collapsing back again, but I do know this: when the door finally closes on my marriage with the decree absolute, I will be financially able to stand on my own two feet.

Assets will have been split and I won't be asking my ex-husband for a penny. My self-respect, if not my bank balance, will be intact.