What the Hell is This?

Years ago I was seeing a wonderful Buddhist counselor with whom I could ponder the broader sociological meanings of some of my personal fears. During one such session, she volunteered that the fear of destitution and living on the street was one she consistently encountered among her female clients, whether they made three figures a year or six. “It doesn’t matter how wealthy they are,” she said. “What’s interesting is that the women who are attached to a man in some way — even if he’s a drain on their resources — don’t seem to share that fear.”

I had been talking with her about my own terror of “falling through the cracks,” of winding up pushing a shopping cart if I dared to leave the secure (if low-paying and dead-end) job that offered me health benefits and a bus pass.

I had been living independently, paying my own rent and eating Ramen, since the age of nineteen, and had struggled on in genteel poverty for years since graduating college. Returning “home” was not an option; I had vowed (even under threat of homelessness) never to come crawling back there like the Prodigal Daughter to relinquish my identity. Feeling burdened by the debt of my student loans, I saw myself as one misfortune away from sleeping in a refrigerator box.

But my counselor was telling me that I had something in common with other single women, regardless of background or circumstances: the inner bag lady.

This observation has since been backed up by a good friend of mine who has worked with a number of unattached women on their career and financial issues. One way or another, this fear surfaces. His own ex-wife, who currently brings in a six-figure income as a company vice-president, went into bag lady panic contemplating her status as a newly divorced woman. What was going to happen to her? How would she take care of herself? Would she wind up shivering on a grate somewhere?

Whence came ye, o inner bag lady?

Well, it’s not like there’s no historical or statistical basis for our fears. Anita Petry of the InterPress Service reported in October 2007 that according to World Bank estimates, women represent roughly 70 percent of the world’s poor. Furthermore

The U.N. Population Fund notes that worldwide, women on average earn slightly more than 50 percent of what men are earning, while women and girls are often the last to eat, and women’s health problems are considered less important than other family priorities.

Not exactly encouraging news. Persistent global undervaluing of women has to have an impact on our psyches. Even if we aren’t ensconced in burkas or prohibited from going to school ourselves.

A recent article in Chicago’s Daily Herald about women and retirement actually mentions the ‘bag lady’ fear as a common one. Some statistics cited:

• Of the 59 million women currently earning a salary nationwide, less than half, 47 percent, have a retirement plan, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s new Women’s Bureau.

• Nearly half of all women work in jobs without retirement plans or 401(k)s, said the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement.

• A retired woman’s median income in 2004 was $12,080, compared to $21,102 for men, according to the institute.

• On average, a woman’s monthly Social Security benefits check is $824, compared to $1,195 for a man, according to AARP.

So we don’t earn as much as men, and often don’t have a 401K. Our Social Security income isn’t even livable. Not so good, ladies.

But then, at least we’re earning. Around the time of the Great Depression (when everyone’s worst fears about poverty came true), Virginia Woolf was writing passionately and persuasively (in A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas) about the prosperity of one sex versus the poverty of the other. Why had it been so difficult, for instance, for women to raise the miserable thirty thousand pounds it took to start a women’s college that had few amenities and prunes for dinner? But it really wasn’t that long before, in our country or hers, that female independence from father, brother, or husband was unthinkable — unless perhaps a lady opted to engage in the oldest profession (which couldn’t, for obvious reasons, be a viable long-term career choice). Even now women face this cultural stricture in third world and fundamentalist-run countries.

We may have come a long way, baby, at least in the West, but there’s still some serious financial disparity, globally and locally, and we women are cognizant of it on a core level. The weight of our collective history may in fact be dragging down our aspirations, and the statistics themselves create something of a glass ceiling.

So it makes sense that even a man who lives extravagantly on his female partner’s income could be seen as an asset, in the light of our apparent lesser value and lesser power as an earner.

All this is not to mention the Cinderella-esque cultural expectations with which many of us were raised, even in the late twentieth century. In my case, both parents were highly traditional religious conservatives whose gender roles came straight from Father Knows Best. My mother stayed at home with us and cleaned house; my father brought home the (admittedly lean) bacon. It was always tacitly assumed that I would grow up, get married, and rely financially on my husband, whether or not I decided to have some cute little job on the side. Neither parent ever taught me a thing about handling money. In my late teens, I decided: screw all that, I would be self-supporting if I had to live on beans and rice, and that if I married at all, it would be for love and not for money or security.

But I still expected to be living on beans and rice. And so far I have definitely met my expectations.

Seriously, though, this crap is a lot for us chicks to overcome. But the first step is to recognize what’s going on. To own our inner bag lady. To know where she comes from. She’s trying to protect us, in her way. Maybe she’s telling us that we need to learn to manage our money better. That Prince Charming is no substitute for understanding our own financial affairs. Ignorance is not always bliss. Sometimes ignorance means waking up at 3 a.m. in a cold sweat, dreaming of shivering on a grate.

Or maybe she just wants us to aim higher.