The Tale of 2 Books (and How I Broke the Binding on My Unwritten Instruction Manual)

My grandmother got married at the age of 9. Her husband was 14 at the time. That was when her education ended and her entry into family life began.

My mother got married when she was 20 after receiving her bachelor’s degree in education. My father was 30 and in the process of obtaining his master’s degree. Soon after getting married and migrating to Canada, she worked in a factory to help make ends meet. She later went on to become a nurse.

My husband and I, both physicians, got married at the age of 29 just as we were completing our respective residency programs.

Women were once considered someone else’s property. We were told, either explicitly or implied, that we were under our fathers’ keep until we were married, at which time we were transferred to the care of our husbands. In some cultures, the parents of the groom were given a dowry—gifts of money, gold, property, or other goods—at the time of marriage. Often, there was bargaining involved. In other cultures, “bride service,” aka “bride price,” was given by the groom’s family to the bride’s family as payment for the bride. In other places, the bride’s father often “gave the bride away” to her husband at the wedding and paid for the expenses associated with the ceremony. In all these cases, there are subtle (or perhaps not-so-subtle) implications that the groom and his family were doing the bride’s family a favor by taking her off their hands.

To answer your burning question, no, there wasn’t a dowry involved at my wedding. However, I often joked that I was the dowry because I had secured a career that could sustainably create wealth for our family. That, ladies and gentlemen, was my master plan. (Insert evil laugh here.) With this history, a statement of this nature could be misconstrued as disrespectful. The truth is, in my heart, I carry deep reverence for the generations of women who endured great suffering under this belief that the value of women to society was that of being someone else’s property. My “master plan” was to never let that happen to me. Even at a young age, I could see how important financial security was to maintain one’s well-being.

It seemed to me that when women lacked financial security, they lost their ability to remove themselves (and their children) from potentially toxic, or even abusive, situations. Part of the driving force for me to become a physician was to remove myself from the cycle of dependency on someone else for my livelihood.

Judging My Own Book by Its Cover

Today, we women can earn money and keep it. We can purchase property. We no longer need our husbands to co-sign paperwork so that we can have a credit card, like we did in the 1960s. My grandmother, who got married so very young, was grateful that her daughters and granddaughters could exercise a different level of agency.

While all this progress is phenomenal, we still have a long way to go.

Every embryo is filled with potential. From the moment a baby is born, the process of socialization begins. We teach them how to eat, play, crawl, and walk. We teach them good from bad, right from wrong. Sometimes, the things we teach them seem innocent and clear-cut, but, unless there is awareness surrounding it, they may have layers of bias that contribute to systemic oppression.

Let’s take an example from my own life.

In 2014, WCI Founder Dr. Jim Dahle wrote a book called The White Coat Investor. My husband highlighted the book, put tabs in it, and truly soaked in the information. He then bought me a copy. I looked at the cover. There was a picture of a man wearing a white coat, a button-up shirt, and a tie. Very crisp and professional. My book stayed pristine. I'm embarrassed to say that it’s because I didn't even look inside.

Why?

I didn't think it was for people like me. I couldn't relate to it. I wasn't rich or fancy. I was deep in student loan debt. I wasn’t like the man depicted on the front of the book—I imagined him to be smart, responsible, assertive, and successful.

I did what every school teacher told me not to do: I judged a book by its cover. I also judged myself by my cover. I was all those things, too—smart, responsible, assertive, and successful. I just couldn’t see it yet.

From a societal perspective, when it came to wealth creation, our male counterparts often received tips and education about this topic throughout their lives. Conversations about money were encouraged. Why? Because it was assumed that one day they would have a wife and children to support. It was assumed that they would become the breadwinner for their family. This was why they were once paid a dowry.

There was not a heavy emphasis on teaching women wealth creation. No, the emphasis was placed on saving money. Remember our mamas clipping all those coupons? Historically, women were taught to save money that was given to them by their father, husband, or another male member of the family. It’s rare that anyone looked at a little girl and assumed that she would one day become the sole breadwinner for her family. Because of this, many girls were not given tools or encouragement to deepen their knowledge regarding financial security or wealth creation. The idea of women talking about money was actually taboo. Even today, some people consider it emasculating when a woman makes more money than their husband.

More information here:

Money and Arranged Marriage

Women and Money: Myths That Hold Us Back

You Should Invest Like a 50-Year-Old Woman

Identifying Unconscious Biases and Societal Expectations

While I had gotten through one hurdle by getting a solid education and landing a well-paying career, I had unconsciously dismissed anything beyond that as it related to wealth creation. After an incident at work a few years ago that left me wondering if I had been the victim of gender discrimination, something shifted. What ensued was a process in which I began to systematically break down all the unconscious biases I carried that were no longer serving me. Here are some truths that bubbled to the surface during this process:

1. Happiness and security were and are my responsibility.
2. I navigate the ship of my life.
3. We all deserve money . . . just like we all deserve love, safety, and a roof over our heads. It provides security. In this day and age, money is a basic need. We don’t need to wait for it to fall into our lap and thank our lucky stars. It is more than OK to reach for, or even create, opportunities.
4. Money is a tool. Like a hammer, it's neither good nor evil. It takes on the intention of the person who wields it.

We are fully capable of making conscious decisions on how we want to socialize ourselves moving forward. First, we need to get comfortable with questioning some of the things we were taught early on. Here are a few examples of questions you can ponder:

• Does your gender affect the way you negotiate your salary?
• Does/did your gender affect the way you select(ed) your partner?
• Does your gender affect the breakdown of household chores between yourself and your partner?
• Does your gender affect the way you parent your children?
• Does the gender of your children affect the way you parent them and what you teach them?
• Does your gender affect the way you think you should function in society?

Once we can identify unconscious biases and societal expectations, we can then begin the work of removing those tentacles from our minds. This will allow us to have greater cognitive flexibility and build new pathways to understanding our world and our role in it. It will give us the momentum to continually break through dysfunctional preconceived notions. If not for you, then consider that who you are and what you do affect not just your world but the worlds of all the people that you touch and the generations to come.

Ready to move the needle?

If you’d like more guidance on how to obtain financial security and financial independence, consider looking into the Financially Empowered Women community through WCI.

The American Medical Women’s Association is an organization that was created over 100 years ago with the goal of improving outcomes for women physicians and their patients. They have divisions to meet the needs of premedical students, medical students, residents, and physicians.

If you are looking for more personalized support, visit Integrative Approaches to Mastering Wellness at iamwellmd.com. In this space, I use coaching to help busy moms who are physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted liberate themselves from deep-seated patterns of thinking so that they can break through their personal glass ceilings and enjoy the life they worked so hard to create.

You deserve to be revered as the leader that you inherently are. As Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . ” We, as women, have seen and endured the worst of times. Are we ready to create the best of times?

Did outdated societal expectations hold you back? Did you ever wrongly judge a book by its cover?