115. Breadwinning Women

REPLAY! Jennifer Barrett, the Chief Education Officer at Acorns, is an expert at helping women shift their money mindsets and take control of their finances. She is also the author of “Think Like a Breadwinner,” a manifesto for the working woman, with tips on building wealth and finding balance. Barrett joins The 411k in this episode to share her own money journey and the research that she is seeing about breadwinning women in the workplace.

Let’s get that bread! More women are family breadwinners today than ever before. Women are the sole or primary breadwinner in 40% of households with kids under 18. Two-thirds of those female breadwinners were single moms with a median annual income of $23,000. New data from the American Community Survey suggests that among married, heterosexual couples in the U.S., a quarter of wives, or about 15 million are the primary breadwinner for their family. In 1960, it was about 6%.

People who are socialized as men are told things that make them feel they should be the provider of the family by means of an income. Unfortunately, for many heterosexual couples, this violation of gender norms can bring up issues with how money impacts power dynamics and decision making in the relationship. A non-financial audit of the relationship is a great way to look at what both individuals bring to the relationship.

On the contrary, the gender norm assuming a male is the breadwinner might be holding women back. In this episode, Jennifer shares how she is helping women shift their mindsets to take control of their money. It’s about time to dismantles the narrative that women don’t -and shouldn’t- take full financial responsibility to create the lives they want, by revealing not only the importance of women building their own wealth, but also the freedom and power that comes with it. We are ready to reclaim, rejoice in, and aspire to the role of breadwinner like never before.