Why Can't Women Own and Keep Wealth at the Same Rate as Men?

Women only own and keep $.32 for every $1 owned and kept by men. Here's the reason no one's talking about.

In a video on our Instagram, our founder and CEO Katie, a trust and estates attorney, broke down a statistic that most people find incredibly shocking and, in many ways, not surprising at all: despite the fact that women's incomes are catching up to men's, women are still only able to own and keep just 32 cents for every dollar owned and kept by men. This is also known as the gender wealth gap.

A big part of this is because women live longer, and so they have more life to fund. Women also don’t invest in the same way or with the same frequency as men. And on top of that, women take on an incredible amount of unpaid labor, step away from the workforce more often, and end up carrying the expenses of caring for children, aging parents, and other loved ones.

This is specifically evidenced in estate planning. Women manage 80% of estate administrations, which means that 80% of the time, when someone passes away, it is a woman sorting through the logistics, the paperwork, and the responsibilities. That work takes an incredible amount of time, and typically that time is unpaid. It pulls women out of their jobs, and in some cases, out of the workforce entirely. And that is just when someone passes away. We haven’t even mentioned the time and money women lose when someone gets sick and a family member needs caregiving. These responsibilities fall disproportionately on daughters and mothers and sisters and other women in your life.

At Mitzi, our mission isn’t just to empower and educate women to put plans in place for ourselves, it is also to encourage the people around us: our spouses and parents and siblings, to plan and to be organized. Because an estate plan is protection not just for the family in general, and not just for the transfer and integrity of wealth, but for the person who is going to be in charge of managing things when the time comes. And most of the time, that person is a woman.

A more extreme illustration of what can go wrong (this one not from having no plan, but from having a bad one paired with a total lack of transparency around shared finances, and, of course, a bad actor) comes from the story Belle Burden tells in her viral book Strangers. The short version: during their twenty-year marriage, Belle’s husband convinced her to alter their prenup (against her family attorney’s advice) so that each spouse would keep whatever they earned in their own name. Meanwhile, he was quietly building a SIGNIFICANT portion of his earnings in a separate account she didn’t know about. All the while, Belle was depleting her own trust fund to finance the purchase of their homes—assets that were subsequently transformed into joint property, providing him with a legal claim to the very wealth she had provided.

As Katie talks about here, one of the most important things women can do is have conversations about finances openly and often. The more you know about your family’s money and your family’s plan, the more educated and empowered you are to make sure things are set up to protect you, and that you aren’t left with a messy surprise if someone passes away, or in this case, simply leaves.

If this resonates with you, or gives you some quiet concern, we understand. So many of the women we speak to carry the same worry about what would actually happen if a spouse or family member were suddenly gone. They tell us they just don’t know what there is, or where anything is. And that is really what estate planning is all about: getting organized and putting a plan in place for the what ifs.

So plan for yourself. Plan for your family. And do your best to own and keep every penny you have worked hard for.

At Mitzi, we’re building a self-guided platform for women to put their foundational estate planning documents in place. If you live in Michigan, you can get started for $99 right here. Everyone else, please, check out our Prepare To Plan Quiz you’ll get a free personalized checklist and we’ll add you to our waitlist so we can notify you when we’re ready for you.

Mitzi is not a law firm and is not providing legal, financial, tax, or other professional advice. No information contained on this website should be construed as legal advice, the practice of law, or a substitute for an attorney or law firm. If you require legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of an attorney licensed to practice in your jurisdiction or other professional.