Women, money & Covid – Iona speaks to Stylist about how to ease the burden on your finances if you’re a young woman hit hard by the pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic has plunged the entire world into a Looking Glass-type state of disarray – one huge side effect being a global economic slump. Britain is experiencing its deepest recession since records began and, like with many unpleasant things, this will affect woman harshly in a number of ways.
So how are things different this time, and how will the latest economic blow affect women specifically? According to Bukiie Smart, financial coach and founder of millennial financial platform Save Spend Invest, the news is both good and bad.
She advises that more women may have entered the workforce than during and immediately after the 2008 financial crash, and the pay gap may have closed slightly, but we still face similar – and larger – struggles in comparison to men. “A disproportionate number of women tend to work in lower-paying jobs, such as in hospitality and education,” Smart adds.
A proportion of women have upped the fight against the gender pay gap by moving their careers into STEM fields like technology, and are also setting up businesses that they can run from home, adapting in some way to the changing landscape of the working world to combat the problems the latest recession is providing.
Unfortunately, the scope of the crisis that Covid-19 will leave in its wake is much wider than those before it. “The last financial crash was a purely economic crisis, but this has been a public health, social and economic crisis,” Iona Bain, financial expert, author of Own It! How Our Generation Can Invest Our Way To A Better Future and co-host of a brand new podcast of the same name, says.
To read more of my advice on how women can manage their money during Covid, click here.
