A somewhat subtle change appears to be occurring in the books written for women about money and financial advice: a handful of titles on Amazon now actually focus on giving advice to executive and high-net-worth women. There’s even one on how female advisors can succeed in a male dominated industry.
Bridget Venus Grimes, CFP, who recently co-founded Equita Financial Network for women-led financial planning firms, is the author of one of the newer books, Corner Office Choices, The Executive Woman’s Guide To Financial Freedom, that addresses the unique issues that women executives face. They often are the family breadwinner. If they are married, they often make more money than their husbands. Yet many times, unsurprisingly, these women take on more responsibility at home than a male executive would. As Bridget notes, these women are incredibly accomplished and busy, sometimes to the point of being overwhelmed. Although they certainly could analyze, understand and manage their finances and investments, many of them don’t allocate the time to do it.
Although Corner Office Choices is written to appeal to potential women executive clients, advisors interested in serving these women may want to read how Brigit works with them and what she has learned about their professional and personal needs.
Rather than offer advice for clients, another new book offers advice for women advisors. A Woman’s Way: Empowering Female Financial Advisors To Authentically Lead and Flourish in A Man’s World is written by two advisor coaches, Michelle Donovan and Patty Kreamer. The book notes in detail the significant barriers women advisors face in a male-dominated profession, and they include many sources to document these points: women advisors performing the same tasks earn less than their male counterparts, few female role models, gender discrimination, and balancing family and work, among others.
The book does not try to minimize these challenges, but attempts to continue the conversation on creating a new, inclusive culture within advisory firms. It does offer women ideas on taking actions that may help them thrive in what can be a very rewarding business.
Admirable goals of both these books are to promote environments where female clients and advisors are treated with the same thoughtfulness and respect as male clients and advisors. I’d like to hear from more of you – male and female -- who want to continue pushing for this to happen. And of course, it will be one of the topics at FA's Invest In Women conference.