In France, over the past twenty years, the wealth gap between men and women has gone from 9 to 16%. A difference that is due to cultural and sociological mechanisms and different expectations with regard to women.
Titiou Lecoq, author of the book, The couple and the money, why men are richer than women published by iconoclast editions, Franceinfo’s eco guest on Friday October 28, reviewed a host of very serious studies, and she shows that these inequalities start with pocket money. “Yes, girls get less pocket money than boys. Not that parents prefer boys. But, little boys more often ask for raises, feel legitimate to do so. And we tend to give more gifts to girls. They are in a position to ask, they seek to please in order to have the gift.” So they don’t learn “to manage a budget”.
As a couple, the differences continue: Madame takes care of daily expenses and Monsieur takes care of investments! Behind love, there is the yogurt pot theorem. “Qwhen there is a large, somewhat exceptional expense, such as the purchase of a car, a mortgage. It is rather the big salary, more often Monsieur, who will reimburse it and the small salary will rather pay for the small expenses, the grocery purchases. Except that these big expenses, they constitute a heritage“
In the event of separation, the women leave with their empty yoghurt pots, and the men with the car or even the purchase of real estate. Titiou Lecoq knocks down a received idea,” separation does not impoverish women on the contrary“, because during all the common life, the gap widened.
It is also a story of culture, of mentalities. “We teach women how to spend, and men how to get rich, to see in the long term, while we rarely put women in the position of getting rich“, assures Titiou Lecoq.
So once the diagnosis has been made, how can we get out of these inequalities? What advice for a better redistribution of wealth in the couple? ” Realize that money is a subject in the couple “, replies Titiou Lecoq. “All the decisions we make have a financial counterpart, so we have to put our finances in order, so that it is more egalitarian “, proposes the essayist.
Watch the full interview: