This week’s Three Thoughts for Thursday is about women and money — and the history that still lives under our business decisions.
We are the first generations of women in history with full legal economic agency. That’s not small. That’s seismic.
In this episode, I share:
• Why women couldn’t legally own money not that long ago
• Why we couldn’t get business credit without a man until 1974
• Why women have always moved money — just not publicly
If you’ve ever felt weird charging, investing, scaling, or claiming authority… this episode will give you context.
Because sometimes what we call “mindset issues” are actually inherited history.
Listen in.
Transcripts
EP 27 T3 Women and Money
Kim: [:
where we're at with money, some of the struggles that we may have with it, and especially those struggles as related to our businesses, they're really rooted in history. And I think understanding a little bit of that history is key into unlocking some of the struggles that we have or some of the challenges that we [00:01:00] face with money and with being female entrepreneurs.
And that's where my three thoughts are for today. So my first thought is. The understanding that women couldn't legally have money, not all that long ago. So back in the mid 18 hundreds before the Married Women's Property Act began passing state by state, married women's income, property, and even inheritance automatically belonged to her husband.
She could not own property independently. She couldn't sign contracts. She couldn't control her wages, she couldn't sue people and she couldn't be sued. So that means that our great-great grandmothers or great-great-great grandmothers, depending upon how old you are may have generated wealth that they never legally controlled.
s. The effect of it still is [:
And that is not small, that is definitely seismic. As women walking around in 2026, we do not have these same restrictions that our great-great grandmothers had. But believe me when I say we inherited through modeled responses, energetic signatures, and over held cultural beliefs that women and money do not belong together in the same way men and money belong together.
elease us from some of those [:
And I know from my personal perspective, my mother didn't have a credit card until after my dad passed away. It was such an amazing thing to watch her as an adult woman, get her own credit, be able to interact with her own money on [00:04:00] her own terms. Before that point in time, she had to pass
everything through my father and in the world she was raised in. And please keep in mind my own personal family situation. I was raised by my grandparents. So for the woman who raised me, who I call mom her experience with money was rooted a long time before my own biological mother's money inheritance took place.
nd not being autonomous from [:
The Equal Opportunity C redit Act was passed in 1974. And until then banks could legally require a woman to have a male co-signer in order to obtain credit. And we think we may have gotten away from this in some capacity, but I can tell you we haven't even in modern times.
So I have a friend who had a farm very close to me. She's since moved on from farming, but she ran the farm. This was her thing. Her husband had his own job, had his own life, had his own situation going on, and really, and truthfully didn't have a lot to do with the farm. She's the one who had the degree in agriculture.
ed store to purchase a large [:
This was in a numbered year with a 2 0 2, so it was in the 2020s. That is crazy to me because even in our world today, especially in a rural situation, a woman is questioned whether she has the authority to make a large purchase for a business that she owns. So I do not ever forget listening to her talk about that story and about how offended she was that she was asked to prove her husband's approval for her to spend money in her own business
some of the experiences I've [:
My third thought on this is women have always moved money, just not always publicly. I think about my mom and I think about my grandmothers and my mother was a successful business woman. But she did it behind my father. My grandmothers, I had a couple of them that were very successful business women.
ission. The reality was, the [:
What they did was they utilized their marriage and their status in order to get where they wanted to go. And in their lives in one case, the husband was incapacitated and couldn't make the decisions himself and in the other, the husband was likely willing to go along with the situation, but it was both of those women who were the main income earners for those families, but publicly
regional trade networks for [:
During World War ii, American women ran farms and factories. My own mother, among them. Many households across time, women are the true financial strategists, even if their names aren't on the paperwork. I think of two other women who really shaped the financial future of their world
and did so in a time when it was not really publicly agreeable to do
so.
Kim: Madam CJ Walker, who created these specialized hair products for African American women, she became the first, if not one of the first. I do believe it's the first self-made woman millionaire in America. That's incredible. And Estee Lauder built a global brand that we still use today.
claim it, and that can feel [:
It is truly uncomfortable to claim our seat at the table for the first time, and we should honor that instead of questioning whether or not we belong at the table. As women, we are learning how to hold money and authority without apology, and that
friends takes moxie. So I see you out there, women entrepreneurs, and I know we're all interested in money and flow and profit and prosperity, and now we can claim that for ourselves in a very public way. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I'll see you in the next episode.
