Women and their special affection to
money is legendary. It is seen in their daily life (e.g. when women would ‘bargain’
at shops more than men do), in the many decisions that women make in their life
(e.g. decision to choose their life partner) and it has been the subject of literature
and popular fiction in all ages. As per the popular position, men love beauty (since
they are seeking a mate who would bear their offspring; and beauty is often a
reflection of heath) while women love money (since they are seeking protection and
safety; which men with money can easily provide). This aspect can be seen to
play most dominant role in relation to the matters of matrimony.
It is widely believed that if a woman
is given two choices, one of a very fine man with scarcity of money Vs an
uninteresting man with lots of money, majority of women would choose the second
choice rather than the first. The only women deviating from this trend would be
teenage girls (who got no wisdom) or women who already got too much money
themselves.
So why are women so attracted to
money?
As per my theory, women loved money
because they seldom had it. All through our history, inheritance laws did not
allow women a share of family wealth; and they were not allowed to take up professions.
And then the society was dominated by men. All these factors caused women to
depend on men for money. Hence it made sense for a woman to choose a man who
had more chance to liberally grant her money (was rich); than a man who would
struggle at it.
All through the history, we see women
trying to gain access to money. This is seen in the practice of women being greedy
for gold, precious metals and jewelry. Since women historically did not have
access to money in the form of currencies, they chose to hoard jewelry as a
form of having access to money. This is also seen in the practice where mothers
would love their sons more than their daughters; since sons would inherit the
family money and hence after death of her husband the woman would have to
depend on her son. So it made sense to pamper the sons a bit more (than
daughters).
Now some theories have been popularized
by modern management gurus promoting women as better managers etc, mainly
because since ages women have been managing their households. This concept of
matriarch having keys of kitchen and dictating terms to daughters-in-law and other
servants is true for resource management and task management points of view but
not for money management. In agri-based societies, money in the form of cash
was scarce. Men were providers of resources while women managed the resources
inside the homes. This equipped women with better skills in things like resource
or task management; but never money management. Women historically never had
experience of managing money, forget about either investing it or profiting from
it. This explains why from Warren Buffet to Jhunjhunwala – most big investors
have been males. Because of this, in general women are bad at finance and
investment since they never dealt in these areas before. And since women are
bad in finance, they would want to choose men who are good in finance. And the
more money one has, it is a sign of being better with money.
But there is a silver lining. Now
that women are taking up professions, doing jobs and earning money themselves, their
priorities are bound to change. They no longer need to depend on men for having
access to money and hence they would dare to choose men who are not necessarily
rich but have other desirable qualities.
- Rahul Tiwary
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