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Thursday 17th May 2012

Are money matters viewed as ‘male territory’?

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Are money matters viewed as ‘male territory’?

Posted by Guest Blogger 28 November 2011 Business |  Careers |  Guest blogger |  Research |  Women Written by Julia Kukiewicz

This week, we’ve been pondering women and their personal finances. 

According to researchers from the Government-funded independent Money Advice Service, almost two-fifths of women are uncomfortable discussing money, compared with a third of men.

Money Advice speculate this is a confidence problem: 30% of women say they didn’t feel confident discussing finance, the study found, compared with 24% of men.

Professor Karen Pine, Behavioural psychologist, author of Sheconomics and Women in Technology contributor, commented on the study.

“Traditionally, money matters have been viewed as male territory,” she said, “this may be one of the reasons why men still feel more confident discussing it and seeking help when needed.”

Male territory?

Although financial services is a somewhat male-dominated sector we’re not so sure that personal finance is a boy’s club. 

According to an M&S survey released earlier this year, for example, 59% of respondents said that women were better at managing their household’s finances.

Later in the week, we saw Teri Oda’s, very funny slideshow on how biology explains the low number of women in Computer Science (subtitled, ‘hint: it doesn’t’) which set us off thinking a bit more.

Oda, a Web security researcher at Carleton University, makes the point that not only is male and female maths ability not as different as is often assumed, you don’t actually need very strong maths skills to code in any case.

What computer science has is an image problem, similar to money’s: both seem, for reasons that are vague and ancient, to be male territory.

Putting that territorial bias into words inevitably seems to involve the phrases ‘analytic’ or ‘right brain’ but that, too, is based on the dual fallacies that men are significantly better at maths-type activities and that it really matters.


Julia edits consumer credit card comparison site Choose, which covers personal finance topics such as budgeting and tools to compare deals on  balance transfers.
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