A report by UBS examines the task in front of women who are the primary breadwinners in the US, showing that trust issues with partners and time constraints hold some back from taking a more active role in financial decision-making.

A famous cigarette ad of the 1960s targeting women proclaimed “You’ve come a long way baby!”

While feminist progress continues to be impressive more than a half century later, a newly released UBS report on pressures facing women who are primary breadwinners might as well be titled “You’ve still got a long way to go!”

According to the report, “Tradition, Trust and Time,” 30 per cent of high-earning, heterosexual women in the US surveyed by UBS are now the primary household earners, yet less than half prefer that role.

And even in the third decade of the 21st century, traditional gender role expectations, trust issues with partners and time constraints are preventing women from taking a more active role in financial decisions compared with men.

In addition, women who are the primary income earners in a household still take on more traditional household tasks, such as cooking, cleaning and childcare, than men who are primary breadwinners, according to the survey of over 800 women and men with incomes of $175,000 or more who were either married or living together.

Gender gap
“The most surprising finding to me was the huge difference between the percentage of women breadwinners who say they prefer being in that role (49 per cent), compared to the vast majority of men breadwinners who prefer being in that role (87 per cent),” Carey Shuffman, head of UBS Global Wealth management’s Women’s Segment, told Family Wealth Report. 

That finding is “indicative of the many challenges that impact women who are primary earners in their households that culminate in a level of ambivalence – or even discomfort – with being in the primary earner role,” Shuffman said.

What advice would she give to wealth managers working with women who are primary breadwinners?

“Take the time and be thoughtful about understanding a family’s – and each individual’s within that family – income dynamics to avoid allowing even subconscious biases or assumptions to play any part in the financial advice provided,” Shuffman said.

She cited the example of a UBS advisor in Boston who recently brought on a couple as new clients who had already interviewed numerous advisors at other firms. 

What not to do
It turned out that the UBS advisor “was the only one who didn’t jump to the conclusion that the money had been earned by the husband and took the time to understand their full financial picture and source of wealth,” Shuffman said. The advisor won the business, Shuffman emphasized, because she “really saw and understood them and their financial dynamic as a couple.”

Another UBS advisor, Miami-based Brenda O’Connor Juanas, has a number of female primary earner clients who either run large private companies or are senior executives at public companies. 

The biggest mistake an advisor can make when working with these type of clients is to “dumb things down and deliver key facts in an easily digestible way,” Juanas said. “Women primary breadwinner clients are accustomed to making analytical and complex decisions on a daily basis in their careers and want to take the same approach when making investment and planning decisions in their personal lives.”

These women breadwinners also struggle with “dedicating so much time to their careers at the expense of not having their personal affairs either organized and/or in order” Juanas said. 

Bandwidth problems
This is particularly true for the clients that have young families and are anxious about not having things like education and estate plans in place, she noted. “These clients often experience guilt around feeling disorganized or disengaged,” according to Juanas, “but the bottleneck is not having bandwidth or time to engage properly and prioritize these matters.”

One such client was the founder of a company that was going to have its initial public offering in six months. She had a young baby at the time and was going through a cross-country move with her husband and family.

“She knew she had to get her personal affairs in order pre-IPO,” Juanas recalled. “She wanted to stay heavily involved in the process instead of delegating completely to her husband but knew this wasn’t realistic. I helped by project-managing the entire process for them both. I vetted and hired their accountant and estate attorney, and worked with these third parties directly to alleviate as much of the admin work as possible for the clients.”

Saving the client time both added value and “was a real benefit,” Juanas said.