Honoring Women’s Equality Day Through Economic Empowerment

Women's Equality Day is observed on August 26 each year, marking the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. That milestone took nearly a century of organizing to achieve. The U.S. National Archives preserves the original document as a reminder of how long structural change actually takes.

The conversation has evolved considerably since 1920. Voting rights were a beginning, not an endpoint. Today, the measure of equality runs through economic life: income, wealth, retirement security, business ownership, and financial independence. Bouchey Financial Group has centered its Women and Wealth initiative on exactly that premise. The right to participate in the economy fully and on equal terms is where much of the remaining work sits.

How Far Women Have Come — and Where the Gaps Remain

Women now make up nearly 47% of the total U.S. workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are more educated than any prior generation, outpacing men in college completion for decades. According to U.S. Census Bureau data on Women's Equality Day, women-owned businesses have grown significantly in number and economic contribution. These are real gains, not cosmetic ones.

The gaps are also real. Women earned 81 cents for every dollar a man earned among full-time workers in 2024, up from 77 cents in 2004. Progress, but slow. As of June 2025, only 55 women led Fortune 500 companies — 11% of the group. Women make up 61.7% of workers earning the federal minimum wage. The headline numbers look better than the full picture.

The Wealth Gap Is Wider Than the Pay Gap

Income is one variable. Wealth accumulated over a lifetime is another, and the gap there runs deeper. Women are more likely to take career breaks for caregiving. They live longer and face a longer retirement. Social Security benefits are calculated on the 35 highest-earning years, which means gaps in employment history reduce lifetime income from the program directly.

According to UN Women's economic empowerment research, women perform the bulk of household and caregiving work — labor that does not appear in GDP calculations and does not generate retirement savings. The economic cost of that invisible work compounds over decades in ways a salary comparison alone never captures.

Economic Empowerment Is Bigger Than a Paycheck

The OECD's work on women's economic empowerment defines it as the ability to participate fully in economic life — employment, entrepreneurship, access to capital, financial inclusion, and decision-making authority. That's a broader frame than earnings. A woman who earns a good salary but has no retirement savings, no investment accounts, and no estate plan is not financially empowered. She's employed.

Financial independence means control over assets, decisions, and the long-term trajectory of wealth.

Financial independence means control: over assets, over decisions, over the long-term trajectory of wealth. That requires planning. It also requires access to advisors who take those goals seriously and have the expertise to address the specific circumstances women navigate — career interruptions, longevity risk, inheritance planning, and the financial aftermath of divorce or widowhood.

The Stakes for the Broader Economy

The OECD estimates that closing the global gender gap in employment and opportunity could add $7 trillion to the world economy. Bank of America research found that equal pay alone could raise U.S. GDP by 3.9%, and equal labor force participation by an additional 2.3%. These are not arguments for charity. They are arguments for economics.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau tracks these trends closely, including the relationship between caregiving responsibilities, workforce participation, and lifetime earnings. The data consistently shows that the structural barriers affecting women's economic outcomes are expensive for everyone — not just for the women experiencing them.

Entrepreneurship as a Path to Wealth

Business ownership is one of the most direct routes to financial independence and wealth creation available. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Women's Business Ownership, women-owned businesses are a growing and significant part of the American economy, with dedicated programs supporting access to financing, contracts, and development resources.

The barriers are real. Women face more difficulty accessing capital, are less likely to have informal networks that provide access to investors, and often carry higher caregiving loads that limit time available for business development. None of these are insurmountable. But they require acknowledgment — and in many cases, planning support — to navigate effectively.

Confidence, Participation, and Long-Term Investing

The Federal Reserve's 2024 research found that much of the measured gap in financial literacy reflects confidence in answering questions, not underlying knowledge. Women are more likely to select "Don't know" than to guess. That tendency gets misread as a capability deficit when it's more accurately a reflection of intellectual caution.

The FINRA Foundation's National Financial Capability Study distinguishes between financial knowledge and the ability to apply it under real-world conditions. Both matter for long-term wealth building. And both improve with access to good advice, clear information, and planning relationships built on trust rather than transaction.

Women Are Already Leading Household Financial Decisions

The CFP Board's 2025 Building Wealth report found that 69% of women are the primary investment decision-makers in their households. Among married women, 60% hold that role. Women are not passive participants in household finance — they're running it.

Bank of America projects that $54 trillion of the coming Great Wealth Transfer will go to surviving spouses, 95% of whom are expected to be women. The financial industry's historical assumption that husbands manage investments and wives defer is outdated by decades. The planning question is whether the advice available to women is built for that reality.

The Work Bouchey Financial Group Does

Bouchey Financial Group's Women and Wealth initiative has never been about treating women as a demographic to market to. It started with a recognition that the wealth management industry has historically done a poor job of serving women clients and hiring women advisors — and that changing that requires deliberate action at the practice level.

The firm's advisory team includes Harmony Wagner, CFP®, CPWA®, Samantha Masey, CFP®, and Catherine Buck, CFP®, alongside a full team of financial planners and CPAs who work with women at every stage of financial life. CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professionals, CPAs, and an IRS Enrolled Agent working together means that tax planning, investment management, estate coordination, and retirement income are addressed as a connected picture — not in isolation.

A Day Worth More Than a Commemoration

Women's Equality Day is worth pausing on. Not because pausing changes anything, but because it's useful to mark what took 100 years to achieve, what has changed in the decades since, and what still hasn't.

Economic empowerment is where the remaining distance lives. Financial independence, retirement security, access to capital, and wealth that accumulates and transfers: those are the measures that matter now. For women navigating that terrain, having an advisor team built to address it is not a luxury. It's the difference between a plan that accounts for real life and one that doesn't.

Bouchey Financial Group offers a free initial consultation for women who want to take those questions seriously. Contact the team directly, or explore recent Women and Wealth discussions through the firm's Webinars and Videos library.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Women's Equality Day and when is it observed? 

Women's Equality Day is observed on August 26, marking the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote. The day was formally established by Congress in 1971 and has since expanded in focus to include economic equality, workforce participation, and financial independence.

What does economic empowerment mean for women today? 

The OECD defines women's economic empowerment as the ability to participate fully in economic life, including employment, entrepreneurship, access to capital, financial inclusion, and decision-making authority. Income is one component. Wealth accumulated over a lifetime, retirement security, and financial independence are equally important parts of the picture.

Why is the wealth gap between men and women wider than the pay gap? 

The pay gap reflects current earnings. The wealth gap reflects everything that compounds on top of it over decades: career interruptions for caregiving, shorter contribution windows for retirement accounts, lower Social Security benefits from years of reduced earnings, and longer retirements that require more accumulated assets to sustain.

How does caregiving affect women's long-term financial outcomes? 

Career breaks for caregiving reduce lifetime earnings, Social Security benefits calculated on the 35 highest-earning years, and retirement savings accumulated through employer plans. The Department of Labor's Women's Bureau documents these effects consistently across workforce data. Planning that accounts for these realities produces materially different outcomes than planning that ignores them.

Are women increasingly making their own financial decisions? 

Yes. CFP Board's 2025 research found 69% of women are the primary investment decision-makers in their households. Among married women, the figure is 60%. Women also control an increasing share of total U.S. wealth, with Bank of America projecting that the majority of the coming generational wealth transfer will flow to women.

What resources exist for women entrepreneurs? 

The SBA's Office of Women's Business Ownership provides access to financing programs, federal contracting support, training resources, and Women's Business Centers across the country. These programs address the capital access barriers that women-owned businesses disproportionately face compared to male-owned counterparts.

How does financial confidence relate to long-term wealth building? 

Federal Reserve research found that much of the measured financial literacy gap reflects confidence in answering questions rather than underlying knowledge. Women who hesitate to guess are not less capable. But lower investment participation driven by lower confidence does produce real long-term differences in wealth accumulation — which is why building a trusted planning relationship matters as much as financial education alone.