Queercents

Sarah Dopp is the editor of Genderfork, a blog that explores androgyny and gender variance through artistic photography. I asked her to write a guest post about gender and money. These are her words…

I’ve given up on television and I avoid magazines. I haven’t figured out a way to escape billboards and pay-per-click banner ads yet, but I know how to cope with them now: I laugh at them.

The way I figure it, marketing is about power. Good marketing is about empowering consumers, while evil marketing is about overpowering them. Then there’s bad marketing, which is in a category of its own. Bad marketing lobs its power in the wrong direction and misses its mark entirely, wasting everyone’s precious time, energy, and money.

Those of us who reject traditional gender roles get to face an excessive amount of bad marketing in our daily lives. We threw a wrench into marketing strategy when we took on nontraditional motivations, unpredictable desires, and unusual ways of expressing our identities. As a result, they lost track of how to reach us. Fortunately for the marketers, we’re a relatively small chunk of the population that can be easily ignored. Read the rest of this entry »

We had about ninety responses to the QC Tipping Survey in the last week. Of those who identified themselves by gender and orientation, we had 39% lesbian, 33% gay men, 21% straight women and two guys who were comfortable with their masculinity. The full results are visible here and my deeper analysis follows below.

Tipping Practices

Adequate restaurant service was worth 15%. Good service earned 20%, occasionally more while poor service knocked it down to 10%. But the polls were pretty split on how to handle a bad service situation. The next two big groups paid 15% or something less than 10%.

About half of you don’t tip the barista at Starbucks, which makes me feel much less guilty. Those that do, favor either a fixed dollar amount or less than 10% which I assume might be the change. Lesbians were the most generous with their coffee shop tipping but by contrast, they were 10% more likely than gay men not to tip the bartender. But the majority of everybody male or female tipped the bartender a fixed dollar amount.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week, Dawn at Frugal for Life has written a great post bringing together some thoughts and comments about gender and frugality. Though it might be true that more women than men think about frugality,  Dawn looks at the ways women are compelled to spend—because they are the primary buyers for families, because they’ve been socialized to see shopping as fun, because of the stricter constraints on women’s appearance and hygiene.  I think this conversation is so interesting, but then I wonder where this difference comes from?  When gender, the noun, starts getting thrown about, I usually start to think about gender the verb.

I (like one of Dawn’s commenters) have heard the generalization that men and women spend similar amounts and carry the same amount of consumer debt, the difference is that women spend small amounts more regularly and men spend more on big purchases, electronics and cars.  According to this market research survey:

Gender complexity is the emerging trend in marketing to both men and women. Just as more younger men now shop more frequently, more women do not want to be characterised as domesticated shoppers — even if their appetite for shopping remains as strong as ever. Read the rest of this entry »

“What a cute little boy!” says a well-meaning middle-aged lady in a tight pink coat.

“Thanks. She’s a girl, actually.”

“Oh!” The lady looks disapprovingly at our daughter’s green dino onesie and matching pants, and then decides to smile.

We get this about twenty times a day. Why? Well, we’ve decided to dress our daughter in stripes of all colors, pants in everything but blue and pink, and those cool A Little Lark onesies with trees, bikes, and other groovy graphics in gender-neutral colors.

We don’t do pink, frills, lace, or dresses (except for parties). Nor do we do blue, sailor outfits, paramilitary gear, junior banker outfits, or any of the other outfits that conventionally mark a baby as male in our culture. Dresses are uncomfortable and constricting for babies; our daughter tends to pull them up over her shoulders—surely not the ‘ladylike’ look they’re intended to create! Read the rest of this entry »

Today I’m going back to work. Gulp.

My partner will be staying home with my daughter until the end of the semester (I’m a college professor and writer; she’s a public interest lawyer). Then we’ll switch: I’ll be home for the summer, and she’ll be back lawyering. After that? Who knows. But for now, I’m an Official Working Mom.

Working all this out was surprisingly simple. My partner and I earn about the same amount of money, but she is at the beginning of her career as a public interest attorney, and can more easily afford a break in her career than I can, as I’m up for tenure in two years. Moreover, I only have to be at work 2-3 days a week, whereas my partner’s job involved the 9-to-more-than-5 grind. Though I’ll miss tickling my baby’s tummy before lunch, this feels like the right decision for us.

We both feel the need to stay home and bond with our daughter as much and as long as possible, and we both want to stay engaged in our respective careers as deeply and fully as possible. This mutuality may seem less than earth-shattering to you, but if you’ve been following the current dialogue on stay-at-home versus working moms, it is indeed a minor revolution. The revolutionary part is that both of us assume that we have the right to pursue our respective careers fully, and we also both assume that we have the right to stay home and care for our child full-time. What’s missing? Gender, and all the baggage/assumptions that come along with it. Read the rest of this entry »

“As far as I’m concerned, being any gender is a drag.” – Patti Smith

Much has been written about gender and money with women earning only a fraction of what men do. That said, sometimes the wage gap is reversed for gays.

All this talk got me thinking about what’s really holding women back when it comes to earnings. Is gender the real cause of disparity or at this stage, do we only have ourselves to blame? After all, I was brought up knowing that I could have any job that I wanted. Read the rest of this entry »

Traditionally women earn less than men. In fact I wrote about how $.25 can leave women millions short because of that gap. Yet, recent news from Time magazine may indicate the opposite holds true for gays and lesbians.

According to a recent study:

…gay men who live together earn 23% less than married men, and 9% less than unmarried heterosexual men who live with a woman.

This doesn’t hold true for lesbians, however. The same study concludes:

While negative attitudes toward lesbians could affect them, lesbians may benefit from the perception that they are more career-focused and less likely to leave the labor market to raise children than heterosexual women.

The story goes on to say: Read the rest of this entry »

“How is it possible that 90 percent of women don’t know anything about their own money?” – Suze Orman

A few weeks ago, Ramit Sethi at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com, a well-known personal finance blog, conducted a reader survey about gender and money. The results (served up in a 30-page SlideShare presentation) revealed some stunning differences in how men and women think about money:

Slide 16: Feelings towards money are different:
Confidence = 58% men vs. 44% women
Anxiety = 18% men vs. 33% women
Apprehension = 15% men vs. 26% women
Confusion = 8% men vs. 14% women

Slide 19: Differences in personal finance topics followed:
Investing = 83% men vs. 70% women
Frugality = 53% men vs. 67% women Read the rest of this entry »