Why Is Money Still Taboo for Women?

I found out one of my managers was putting money in front of me that I didn't even know to ask for.

Not because I negotiated well. Because I got lucky. My boss at Starwood, Joe, looked at the salary band I was sitting in, saw I was near the bottom despite strong performance, and quietly put in for a market adjustment on his own. I didn't ask him to. I didn't know I needed to.

That story sits with me because of what it reveals: if Joe hadn't done that, I never would have known. I would have kept progressing in that company with a salary anchored at the low end of the band, forever, because I didn't have the information to advocate for myself. And the reason I didn't have that information is the same reason so many women don't. Money is one of the last real taboos we carry, and it is costing us more than we realize.

Why women are taught not to talk about money

Some of my earliest memories with money involve watching my dad and older brother talk about the stock market while I sorted pennies into a coin book. Nobody sat me down to explain finance. I understood I needed money, I understood how to be frugal, but the actual mechanics — investing, compounding interest, negotiation — were never explicitly taught to me the way they seemed to be modeled for the men in my life.

Teresa's story is different in its specifics but familiar in its shape. Her parents, both doctors, carried a certain distrust of money and the people who had a lot of it, even while they themselves were financially comfortable. That contradiction created a strange relationship with money early on — an unspoken sense that talking about it directly wasn't quite proper.

This is the pattern. Not an overt lesson that money is bad to discuss, but an absence. A gap where financial literacy should have been, filled instead with vague discomfort. And that gap doesn't close on its own. It follows you into your first job, your first negotiation, your first performance review, and it costs you every single time you don't ask a question you didn't know you were allowed to ask.

The lesson everyone needs and almost nobody gets

Both Teresa and I can trace a real shift in our financial understanding back to a single college class. Compounding interest, explained clearly for the first time, changed how we thought about saving permanently. The earlier you start, the more time your money has to grow on itself. It sounds obvious. It is not obvious until someone actually walks you through the math.

This should not be a lucky elective. It should be mandatory. Understanding how to build a budget, how the stock market functions, how to invest, and what compounding interest actually does over a decade or three — this is basic financial literacy, and most of us are never formally taught it. We piece it together late, often after making a mistake that costs real money.

I made that mistake. I had a meaningful amount of money sitting in a savings account earning close to nothing while a financial advisor collected fees and didn't correct course. It took me years and a frustrating conversation to understand that money sitting idle isn't neutral. It's actively losing ground to inflation while doing nothing for you.

Don't trust the promise. Trust the number

Here is a rule I give every client evaluating a job offer: only trust the money that's in writing today. Ignore any promise about the future.

This shows up constantly. "This is just the starting salary, but we'll revisit it in six months." "Once you prove yourself, there's a raise coming." Sometimes these people mean it. But circumstances change. Budgets shift. The manager who promised you the raise leaves before your review cycle. And you are left holding a verbal commitment that nobody is obligated to honor.

The rule is simple: accept the job based on the salary that's actually offered, today, in writing. If that number doesn't work for you, don't take the job hoping the promised increase materializes. It might. But you cannot build your financial plan on a maybe.

The truth about equity nobody tells you upfront

Startup culture loves to make up for lower cash compensation with equity, and there are a few problems with how that gets sold.

First, most companies will describe your equity in a way that makes it functionally impossible to understand what it's actually worth. Second, the pitch is almost always some version of: this company is going to be huge, and in five years you'll be able to retire on this. The reality is that the number of people who see a real financial exit from startup equity is small. The math, most of the time, does not math.

This is not an argument against ever taking equity. It's an argument for understanding exactly what you're agreeing to. Pay close attention to vesting schedules. A proper schedule includes a one-year cliff, then gradual vesting after that. If there's no cliff and everything vests at the five-year mark, staying four years and eleven months gets you zero dollars. Understand double-trigger clauses, which can mean you lose unvested equity even after years of work if you leave before a qualifying exit event.

The rule I use: the cash needs to work on its own and meet your actual financial goals. Equity is gravy. It should never be the reason a compensation package that doesn't otherwise work suddenly makes sense.

How to actually negotiate

Here is the sequence, distilled from years of Teresa and me making mistakes, correcting them, and coaching other women through the same conversations.

Do your homework before you enter the conversation. Understand your own finances well enough to know what you're actually asking for and why. Not because bigger numbers sound impressive, but because you understand what that gap means for your life.

Anchor at the right number, not a number designed to be negotiated down dramatically. If your real target is $140K, don't open at $130K hoping to land at $160K. That kind of gap reads as bad faith. Research the actual range for your role using resources like levels.fyi or Glassdoor, and anchor near the top of what's realistic.

State your number and stop talking. This is the part that trips up so many women. We tend to justify our ask with a list of reasons — I looked at the market, I think I deserve this because — when the strongest move is simply stating the number and letting the silence do the work. Do not fill the pause. Do not walk it back. Let it sit.

And talk to your colleagues, not just your female colleagues. Gender bias is baked into compensation systems, often unintentionally, and the only way you find out someone in your exact role is making $20K more is by actually asking.

The bigger point

None of this works if the taboo stays intact. Every time a woman doesn't ask what her friend makes, doesn't push back on a lowball offer, doesn't understand her own equity package, the gap holds exactly where it is.

I don't want you to rely on having a Joe. A manager who happens to notice you're underpaid and does something about it without being asked is a gift, not a plan. The plan is understanding your own finances well enough that you never need to be rescued. Talk to your friends. Know your number. State it, then stop talking.

Knowledge is power, and for too long, women have been asked to operate without it.

Want to hear the full conversation?

Listen to Episode 107 of Rewritten: Real Talk for Working Moms Who Want It All on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, andYouTube.

If this resonated and you want help getting clear on your own numbers and negotiating with confidence, I work with women one-on-one to do exactly that. Book a free consultation at reworkit.co/schedule-a-consultation.

Jess Wass is the Founder of Reworkit, a leadership development and coaching company, and co-host of Rewritten: Real Talk for Working Moms Who Want It All. She helps women ditch the script they were handed and build a life that's actually theirs.