Do You Also Believe the Mantra “Women Are Always Broke?”

Or Is Wanting More a Crime?

3 min read

1 hour ago

I went out shopping with my boyfriend for the festive period. We were done with shopping, bags in hand, errands checked off, money already spent. As we were about to leave, I saw one more thing I wanted. It wasn’t a necessity, not even urgent, just something small that made me pause and I want it. So I asked him to get it for me, he laughed and said, “Babe, you have money. You just always want me to buy more for you. Why are you women always broke?”

We both laughed, he eventually paid and the moment passed, but the sentence didn’t. Because later, alone with my thoughts, I realized something uncomfortable: I wasn’t broke, I had money, I just wanted more and somehow, that had been translated into lack. That’s when it hit me: maybe women aren’t always broke, maybe being a woman is just freaking expensive.

The price tag attached to being a woman

From the moment we grow up, spending isn’t framed as choice, it’s framed as obligation. Look decent, smell good, be soft, but put together. Handle your emotions, but also everyone else’s just because we are women.

We spend on hair, there is hair politics at work because professionalism demands it. We…