Money

Each time I go to another “for women” meeting, I get more and more disappointed in members of my gender.

As a way of celebrating Women’s History Month (which pisses me off in so many ways that I won’t go into it) my firm organized a session on women and money. I ran to the session twenty minutes late cause I had a meeting, so I can’t vouch for the first part of the meeting. But the second part gave me enough frustration to last a few weeks. It also confirmed my suspicions that I must not be female.

The first thing the presenter does is ask people what their parents taught them about money. Several hands go up. Women say: “My dad told me never to pay on a date.”, “My mom used to sing ‘Daddy’s coming home, he’ll give us all his money.'”, “My mom told me to marry rich.”, and this went on and on.

Holy Fucking Shit! Is this the 21st century or not? Every single woman in this room is working at quite a prestigious firm, so we’re not talking people who went to college to find a husband. Or why would they be working?

My mom never graduated high school. My father never finished college. Both have worked pretty much every single day I’ve been alive. Neither ever told me to make the man pay or that I’d never be able to make money on my own. I don’t mean to imply that my parents never disagreed about money. They fought all the time, even though we were fortunate enough to have enough to go around.

My father used to hate the enormous phone bills so much that when my sister and I were teenagers, he had machines installed on the phone lines to cut us off after three minutes (cost multiplies in Turkey every three minutes so the longer you’re on the phone, the more you pay). It wasn’t that we didn’t have the money to pay; he just got irritated by how much we took advantage of the situation. Most money related issues were handled similarly. If we really wanted something we got it but not if it was merely caprice. For some reason, I don’t think that either my sister or I never took anything for granted. We never assumed that all we wanted could be ours. Even now, we’re more likely to not buy something than go crazy with shopping.

So I don’t know whether my parental education on issues of money was any healthier than other people’s but I was never ever told that I would need a man to provide the cash in my life.

The presenter says that a large population of women fear being a “bag lady”. Huh? She claims this is a common fear in wealthy, professional women. Huh? Maybe I’m snotty, but I have never ever had that fear. Or anything equivalent. Is that cause I’m fortunate enough to have a family who’s financially secure? Nope. I know better than to assume that money today has any guarantees. My parents could get sick and that money would disappear literally within days due to doctors’ fees. They could make bad investments. There are a million things that could go wrong. I could even lose my own savings overnight and be forced to start from scratch.

So what? Don’t I still have a brain? Even if all technology jobs dried up and I couldn’t get something in my field, I could learn a new skill. How is it that women question their capacity to mold to different situations? And don’t even get me started on the presenter’s opinion on women and math. I’m so sick of women becoming victims and I’m even sicker of women who victimize themselves.

I have many fears, but the ability to make money has never been one of them. It seems that makes me a minority in my gender.

What a shame.

Previously? Unspoken.