It’s A Girl!

I want to make an announcement. No, despite my misleading use of a crib mobile, this has nothing to do with babies or pregnancy. 

Many of you already know the thing I’m about to say. Others don’t. If you are not already aware of this information, I would love to know what you suspected.

I am a woman.

Specifically, I am this woman:

Hello! See? I really am a real person. I really do wear a military uniform, too.

Now, the reason I know that many of my readers already know I’m female is because the reason I started this blog was the wonderful women of an officer’s group on Facebook (shoutout to the WOF). They know who I really am, they are the ones who convinced me to start the blog, and they have supported me throughout. Additionally, a military blogger group I belong to knows my real identity, and I’ve met some people in real life who know I’m female, if not my full name (hello DC Money Nerds!). Also a few people have mentioned it on Twitter, and I’ve hinted about it other places.

Point being: this is not some super Top Secret information. But this is the first time I’m mentioning it here on the blog.

I’m about to get real in this post. I’m going to talk about people’s perceptions of women and money, and why I haven’t mentioned this before, and some of the things I considered when deciding how open to be about this. If that’s not your thing and you are just here to learn about money, cool. I’ll see you next time. We’ll be back to talking personal finance in a couple of days.

If you are reading a blog instead of a textbook because you are interested in how money works in real people’s lives, read on. There are no lessons here…not on personal finance, anyway. It’s just a multitude of thoughts about why I haven’t publicized this information previously and some information about…well…culture and perceptions.

Why I Haven’t Publicized Myself As A Female Personal Finance Blogger

Privacy

First and foremost, I kept this information private to protect my identity. As a military member, I’m taught to not give away information unnecessarily. As an introvert, I don’t want people to know too much about me because I like to be left alone! I don’t want people to know a lot about me. This blog was built to help others learn about personal finance. There are many wonderful blogs that were created as a journal of sorts, and those tend to get deeply personal. They are awesome and I respect that decision. But that’s not me. I created this blog to be a teaching platform, because that’s what my audience requested. Teaching platforms don’t need to be so personal, which is great for me since I don’t like to share a lot of details.

Even the people whom I’ve met in real life only know (so far) my first name at most. Eventually maybe I’ll be more open, but for now I plan to maintain my privacy. In fact, I haven’t even told the majority of my family and friends that I have a blog. That’s changing today, by the way. Wish me luck.

Relevance

Second – there was no need for anybody to know I was a female personal finance blogger. Not in my niche and with my style. While I do believe there are some things that are different for women and men when it comes to personal finance, those aren’t the things I write about. I write about what a stock is – stocks don’t care whether you are male or female. I write about military pay and benefits – for the most part, those are the same regardless of your gender.

There are some fantastic female personal finance bloggers and podcasters who do focus on women and money. Let’s face it, while money may work the same for everybody, how we use it is different! If that’s something you are interested in learning more about, here are just a few of my favorites:

• Feminist Financier
• Bravely Go
• The Fairer Cents
• Bitches Get Riches
• The Luxe Strategist

Perceived Credibility

Now we get into the squishy stuff. Men are assumed to know more about, care more about, and be better at money and personal finance than women.  Even when there is significant evidence to the contrary! Some evidence is here and here and here. 

What else do those links show? While women may be slightly better at managing their money, our confidence in our ability to do so is significantly lower. Ladies, we have got to stop selling ourselves short. A big part of the credibility difference isn’t actually based on ability – it is based on our perceptions of our abilities! 

If you happen to know of an article or study that shows that on average people perceive women as more competent at personal finance than men, I would love to see it. That’s not a challenge, it’s an invitation. Please put a link in the comments. You would make my day and I will publicize the heck out of that link. But, sadly, having people assume I was a man probably increased my credibility. I have no proof of that, but I do believe it given the number of kudos I’ve received accompanied by people using male pronouns or addresses.

“Male Personal Finance Blogger” is the default perception

When you want to keep your identity a secret, letting people assume you are a different gender is an easy way to throw them off the scent. Due to American perceptions about gender and money (and also gender and the military) it was easy to let people assume I was a male. And I was quite successful in letting people assume that. 

I know, I know, people would never think I was male simply because I write a personal finance blog and didn’t indicate differently. And probably people are sitting there reading this going “I never thought you were male!”

It’s entirely possible that you, specific reader, didn’t assume I was male. But without a doubt, most people assumed I was male. Every time I’ve met people in person, as least one person has said “I thought you were a guy!” It’s also evident in the way I was addressed again and again.

That is but a small sampling of the many times I’ve been assumed to be male.

JK Rowling did this when she published Harry Potter, by the way. Do you know this story? And have you heard of androcentrism? This is real. Here’s an article on people assuming the person on the other side of the computer is male. If you don’t explicitly state that someone is female, the natural tendency in our culture is to assume they are male. That makes them more broadly appealing, as females are more likely to accept a male voice than males are to accept a female voice.

Want to see an example in the personal finance blogging space? Check out this post from Michelle Schroeder. As a wildly successful female personal finance blogger, she not only had people assuming she was male. She had people telling her she was spelling her name wrong.

Recently, I had someone email me to say that I was spelling my name incorrectly all over my blog – that I wrote Michelle instead of Michael. They actually apologized for thinking that only a man could have built the business that I built. This isn’t the first time either.”

I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to call anybody out for doing exactly what I expected. I want to especially communicate that I am not bothered by anybody assuming that I was male. I’m a military member writing about personal finance. I get called sir on the regular by people who are looking straight into my face. Every woman in the military has had that experience (hyperbolic, but probably true over time). Trust me, I was prepared to be thought of as male. It rolls off my back like rain off an oilskin coat. I’m not bothered by people assuming I was male, as I hope you aren’t bothered by me not explicitly stating it one way or the other.

Harassment

Fourth, and it pains me to say this but it’s true, I don’t want to get harassed because I’m a woman. Women are more likely to be harassed online than men, especially if they are performing a “traditionally male” function. Again, some information can be found here and here and here and here.

And I have the stories from fellow female bloggers I’ve met who talk about being hassled. And I have the anecdotal evidence that on the rare occasion I’ve mentioned that I’m female on forums, I’ve acquired…well stalkers is too strong a word, but certainly a couple people felt it was worth their time and mine to follow me from post to post to bother me.

The vitriol with which I have seen women attacked online is just utterly ridiculous. Male bloggers talk about trolls who leave stupid and sometimes hateful comments. And they do receive more physical threats than women. But female bloggers talk about trolls who threaten to rape or kill them. There is a big difference there! I don’t know what it is about half the population of this planet that inspires such hatred, but it is real.

From the Pew Research Center article linked above:

In broad trends, the data show that men are more likely to experience name-calling and embarrassment, while young women are particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and stalking.”

If you don’t recognize this online harassment, you are either blessed or part of the problem. I have to hope that, for my readers, it’s the former.

My comments section is moderated and if some troll decides to write something awful, I don’t have to let it go public. But I will know. This is also why, besides this single post, I have no intention of putting this information on my blog. I’m not going to edit my About page or put up my picture. My original reasons for keeping this information to myself stand.

So why am I sharing this information with you now?

Well, first of all, the word is getting around. A few people have shared the information, not knowing that I intended to keep it quiet. Others have met me in person…it becomes pretty obvious at that point! Plus, I was recently a guest on the FIRE Drill Podcast (which you should check out if you haven’t already) and again, it’s really obvious that I’m a woman!

Second, I’m a feminist. Not in the caricature bra-burning man-hating sense of the word (that is NOT what a feminist is!), but in the everybody-should-get-the-same-opportunities sense. So even though I’m not angry that people assume I’m male, I also don’t want them to assume I’m male. I’d like it if androcentrism was a little less common, you know?

And it’s annoying that people assume finance bloggers are male! I don’t mind when people assume I am male, since I am blogging anonymously. But when a clearly female personal finance blogger is assumed to be male? Let’s call a spade a spade. That is bullshit. 

In late September, someone who knows I’m the author of this blog told me she thought it was wise that I was keeping my gender private. We talked for a bit about unconscious bias and that keeping my gender out of the discussion allowed people to read the message without being distracted by the fact that I’m female. 

Recognizing that people have unconscious bias is not a bad thing. We all do it. Do I wish we didn’t? Of course. I also wish that I could eat pizza every day and not gain weight. That’s not going to happen, so instead we need to learn to work around our biases just like I had to learn to get over my hatred of running. So let’s look at some biases that might be at play here.

Military Gender Bias

Go on, admit it – if you were to close your eyes right now and imagine somebody in the military, it’d be a dude. I know. Assuming a random stranger who is in the military is a male is natural, given the ratio of men to women in the military. Except…there might be more women in the military than you think.

(note: I am going to use “female” and “women” interchangeably here, because that is how the report I used is written. But I recognize the increasing role of transgender troops in the military. As their numbers grow, I assume the military will start accounting for it in similar reports)

Let’s look at the numbers. As of 2016:

• Approximately 1 in 6 (15.9%) of Active Duty US military members is female. Females make up 17.3% of the Active Duty officer force and 15.6% of the enlisted force.
• Looking at the Reserve Component, the percentage of females is even higher. Women make up 19.3% of the Selected Reserve force, including 19.2% of the officers and 19.3% of enlisted members.
• Across the Total Force (Active and Reserve), women make up 17.2% of military personnel. That’s up from 15.4% in 2000.
• The Air Force (my branch of service) has the highest percentages of women. 19.4% of all Active Duty Air Force members is female; 20.6% of officers and 19.1% of enlisted. That means if you picture five Active Duty Air Force members, 1 of the 5 should be female. By comparison, in the Marines only 8.1% of Active Duty members are female. The Navy, Army, and Coast Guard all fall somewhere in the middle.

I am a female Active Duty officer in the Air Force. I’m not a rare and magical unicorn. There are plenty of us.

Female Personal Finance Blogger Bias

The personal finance blog space doesn’t have an official way to track these things. Not that I know of, anyway. What we do have is Rockstar Finance. Specifically, the amazing Rockstar Directory of personal finance blogs.

The Rockstar Directory allows people to search for personal finance blogs using a variety of criteria, including (you guessed it) gender.

Now, you have to self-submit to be included in the directory. And all information is self reported. And you only have to report what you want to report. So this is by no means a scientific study of how many female personal finance bloggers there are. But it’s the best thing I’ve got right now.

• Of the 1411 personal finance blogs registered with Rockstar Finance today (holy cow that is a lot!), 459 are registered as female bloggers. That’s 32.5%.
• Another 117 (8.3%) are registered as Teams, which are often-but-not-always male-female couples. It even includes some all-women teams.
• 73 of the 1411 (5.2%) are registered as Unspecified, including several that I know for a fact are female bloggers. This is how I am registered with Rockstar.

If we assume that just half of the Team and Unspecified blogs have at least one female personal finance blogger, that plus the 32.5% registered as female means 39.3% of personal finance blogs registered with Rockstar are written at least partially by female bloggers. 39.3% is an awfully high percentage. It doesn’t really make sense to assume a personal finance blogger is male, then, does it? If more than 1 out of 3 personal finance bloggers is female, then why is the default association male? If you think that isn’t happening, I refer you back to Michelle Schroeder’s post and that graphic of people assigning me male attributes. Yes it is anecdotal evidence, but it’s still evidence.

What Should We Do About Bias?

To be honest, I don’t know. Bias is sometimes helpful. It helps us cut through the clutter of the vast amounts of information we are inundated with day in and day out in modern society.

But at the same time, you shouldn’t allow bias to limit you. In relation to what we are talking about today, it’d be silly if somebody allowed a bias against women and their understanding of money to prevent them from gaining value from this blog. Or any female personal finance blogger. Or just women in general. It’d be just as silly if someone thought a man couldn’t teach them about money, right?

I don’t have answers here. I’m just pointing out that these biases exist. If we all thought through our biases a little more, maybe we could all communicate a little better. A girl can hope.

What I’m Hoping To Get Out Of Telling You This

Personally? Literally nothing.

Between the podcast, and hints I’ve placed online, and people making reference to my gender in passing, I thought it was time to acknowledge it formally. But I’m hoping nothing happens as a result of this post.

As I indicated, my brand of feminism is egalitarianism. As an egalitarian, I don’t want to be treated specially (either positively or negatively) as a result of my gender. I don’t want to acquire more female followers because they see me as speaking their language. And I don’t want to lose male followers because they think I no longer speak their language. I’m going to keep speaking the language of personal finance and military money. I’m going to continue treating this as a teaching platform. If you want to talk to me about the more personal aspects of personal finance (including how it relates to gender), the best places to reach me are on Twitter or Facebook.

For my readers – no matter what you thought before this post – it would be kind of nice if I sparked some introspection about bias, and perception, and assumption. Even if nothing changes immediately, simply being cognizant of these things is helpful.

So to review….I’m female, there are more female personal finance bloggers and female military members than you might think, bias isn’t necessarily bad but should be examined, and don’t be mean on the internet (to anybody) because it’s stupid and a waste of time.

So…How was your Christmas?