When it comes to financial pressure, women have it all — all the responsibility, that is. And not all that much support or assistance.

According to a study of women of wealth, “What do Breadwinner Women Want?” conducted by the Family Wealth Advisors Council (FWAC), a nationwide network of leading independent wealth management firms, women are the breadwinners in 40 percent of American families.

If that’s not enough responsibility, think about these facts: 95 percent of women will be their family’s principal financial decisionmaker at some point in their lives, and female breadwinners are responsible for no less than 75 percent of all financial planning responsibilities in their households. In addition, those women supporting their families are assuming as much as 90 percent of the responsibility for charitable giving, paying for college, retirement planning and overall saving.

You would think, maybe, that with women being so responsible for a family’s financial health that they’d be cheered on by their relatives and certainly supported by the professionals they pay to look out for their monetary needs.

But no. Not only do 40 percent of women respondents say they feel pressured by family and friends to keep quiet about the fact that they’re the family breadwinners, 28 percent say their parents actually disapprove of their role in keeping the family’s body and soul together.

And when it comes to advisors? Well, there’s a whole lot of room for improvement. It’s so bad that respondents gave their advisors a score of 5 on a scale of 1–10. “That’s a horrible grade, and it reflects the huge service delivery gap that exists for financial education and a ‘safe’ environment for women breadwinners,” said Heather Ettinger, who coauthored the study with Eileen O’Connor.

The study said that breadwinner women look for a wide range of services from their financial advisors, but often don’t get what they’re seeking. Some of those missing services include coordination with other advisors and the creation of higher education and charitable giving strategies.

Considering that 80 percent of men die married and 80 percent of women die single, that means that the vast majority of women will find themselves in the financial decisionmaker role at some point in their lives. Advisors could help with that, particularly as women age and approach retirement, but women are frequently shut out of the financial side of things until suddenly it all becomes their responsibility.

Divorced women, the study said, are least trusting or knowledgeable of advisors and the value they can bring, and about 70 percent of widowed women change their financial advisor within a year of their partner’s death because they don’t have a relationship with the previous advisor.

Instant Insights /

Female breadwinners hassled by families, unsupported by advisors

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