Feminine Sovereignty and the Money Nobody Taught Us to Talk About
In the last post I talked about why we've stopped reaching for words like ‘matriarchy’ and ‘power’ and landed instead on something more internal and thoughtful, ‘feminine sovereignty.’ It suggests our worth doesn't need a comparison.
This post is about the part of that worth that's hardest to talk about, that of our financial worth, and the question is why there are so many capable, intelligent women who undercharge for their work, hand over swathes of their time to unpaid tasks, and perhaps oversee the financial decisions in their relationships. This isn't about the budgets though, this is about the psychology, and it's where our work actually lives.
A woman who can't leave isn't sovereign, whatever she believes about her own worth.
We can do all the inner work in the world, we can build up the confidence, the self-talk, the boundaries, but if leaving a relationship, a job, or a living situation isn't financially possible, none of that inner work has anywhere to go. Sovereignty needs a grounding that is firmly rooted in the earth. However, women cannot ignore how money provides everything within it.
How many women consider the overtime they are not actually earning for the work they do within the home? That isn’t to say women are alone in this, others work in the home too, however women cannot opt out of the role because it is a given that this is the feminine domain. Women are judged for an untidy house by visitors of both genders after all.
How many women avoid discussing their income because they are unsure of the message this gives especially if they are high earners? Is a woman considered successful if she is high achieving or is it deemed that she must be sacrificing something and therefore assumed it must be the domestic duties?
How many women were advised to have a rainy-day fund by the women in their family and although women have financial freedom that their mothers and grandmothers may not have had, how many have one all the same?
And how many know that women in some sectors are essentially not paid from late October every year because of the gender pay gap?
There is a difference between a woman who's financially dependent and one who's financially sovereign but chooses interdependence.
And this distinction should be applauded because this is what we want our daughters to know and our sons to understand.
Financial sovereignty isn't the same as being wealthy, and it isn't the same as being alone. A woman can be financially sovereign and still choose to share money, pool resources, and not feel lesser if her partner earns more. Sovereignty is about the choice being hers, not just how it ends up being. The test isn't the pounds in the account. It's whether she could choose her own ground and lay down her own roots if she needed to.
A son raised to see a woman's financial independence as a threat may, without meaning to, grow up to respond as though it is. A son raised to see it as simply hers, and no more remarkable than his own, can grow into a man who doesn't need a woman smaller than him to feel secure. That's not a female issue we're solving. It's a family one. Sons put down the rope of ego and daughters never need to feel its bite.
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