Christine redid her calculations a hundred times. Stubbornly, the same figure appeared on his computer screen: more than 200,000 euros. The amount that this senior communications executive would have saved if she had been taxed, over the course of her career, on her income alone. But, married for thirty years, she was subject to the joint taxation system: a single rate calculated for her tax household. However, her ex-husband earned significantly more than her, up to 80% in certain years. “And I couldn’t get redress at the time of the divorce,” she sighs. Find the error…
Since September 2025, this tax injustice has been over. From now on, an individualized withholding tax rate will be calculated for each member of the couple, civil partnership or married. In short, everyone has their own pay slip or pension, everyone has their own bill – unless explicitly requested otherwise. “Thank you Marie-Pierre Rixain!” slips Christine. It was an amendment from the Renaissance MP for Essonne, former president of the women’s rights delegation of the National Assembly, which turned things upside down, allowing new progress in the long quest for economic and financial equality begun in 1965.
Psychological brakes
That year, a law turned the lives of married women upside down: finally, they are allowed to work, open their own bank account and manage their personal property without the prior blessing of their husband. “For the first time, we are recognizing their ability to take care of their money, which until then was the domain of males,” explains psychoanalyst Nicole Prieur. However, they did not feel capable of doing so and they passed on their shyness towards money to their daughters. Sixty years is a short time on a psychological level to put in place new representations…”
It is so short that in 2025, according to an Ifop survey for La France Mutualiste in partnership with Bpifrance Le Lab, only 34% of respondents believe that women’s financial independence has been achieved. There is therefore still a way to go, apparently, to completely overcome the inequities, small and large, which still cost them dearly. Certainly, we have made progress in recent years. So, ex-spouses or ex-partners are no longer systematically obliged to assume the tax debts of their partner who evaded the tax – 87% of exemption requests are made by women. Recently, a new text, also signed Marie-Pierre Rixain, requires the payment of salaries, allowances and social benefits into a bank account held or co-held by the beneficiary. No longer possible, therefore, to deposit the money due to Madame into Monsieur’s account. As for recipients of the disabled adult allowance, their spouse’s income is no longer taken into account in the calculation of their benefit..
“I am for this “deconjugalization” to apply to all social benefits, insists Marie-Pierre Rixain. Because women’s money belongs to them, and it is not additional income in the family or the couple. She designates other inequalities to be abolished: “In the event of divorce, if the compensatory benefit is paid over a period of more than twelve months, it is deductible from income tax for the person who pays it and taxable for the person who receives it – women in the vast majority of cases. This is the regime applied to alimony.” At the end of October, the National Assembly adopted two amendments rectifying this situation. To see if they survive the adoption of the budget.
Money, still a taboo subject
In a relationship, money issues sometimes seem like a minefield. “This remains a taboo subject,” emphasizes psychoanalyst Nicole Prieur. The hypervaluation of love as the glue of the family has penalized women. If they count, it is because they are petty, they who were raised in the ideal of giving and listening to the desires of others. A survey carried out by Ifop in 2023 for the feminist newsletter Les Glorieuses sends shivers down your spine: 41% of respondents have already suffered at least one form of domestic economic violencewhether their spouse exercised control over their spending, cut back on their savings, plundered the family budget or restricted their career.
As a bonus, inheritance traditions die hard. Sociologists Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac showed this in their book “The Gender of Capital, how the family reproduces inequalities” (La Découverte, 2020). According to these two researchers, “structuring assets”, that is to say “the things that must be kept” (agricultural land, businesses and buildings), are still most often transmitted to the sons of the family, with their sisters receiving a sum of money in compensation. In addition, boys receive more financial support, for example by receiving advance donations from their parents more frequently.
Women’s heritage is affected. In 1998, it was 9% lower than that of men. In 2015, the gap widened to 16.3% (latest data available). Worldwide, they control only a third of household financial assets. But times are starting to change, judges Audrey Duez, notary in Paris: “Today, fathers aged 50-60 trust their daughters to ensure their inheritance. Especially since the professions of expertise with which they surround themselves, accountants, notaries or lawyers, are now very feminized.
When they work for free
On the wage front, equality is also progressing, but very slowly. Certainly, the gap between men and women has narrowed by a third, for equal working hours, between 1995 and 2023. But it still reaches 22.2% when including part-time jobs. As if, this year, employees worked for free from November 10 until the end of the year, calculated Les Glorieuses. Result of these lower salaries? Pensions are meager once retirement time comes, while women’s life expectancy is longer: they receive, on average, 37.5% less than men – 23% when adding their survivor’s pensions.
The causes are known: the professional choices of women which lead them towards less well-paid sectors and professions; their low presence in management positions; their reluctance to ask their boss for a raise. 48% of them do not dareaccording to the Audencia-KPMG professional equality barometer carried out by OpinionWay, while only 28% of their male colleagues are in this case.
This different relationship to money emerges from childhood. In a fascinating documentary broadcast on Arte, “Rich women don’t roam the streets”, little girls give their opinion: “Earning money is good, but the important thing is to love your job,” says one. “Silver is beautiful, it shines, but it’s useless,” adds another. Pocket money is the first breeding ground for injustice. For the same monthly allowance, 18-year-old boys earn 200 euros more than girls in the year. The difference is the extensions that they don’t hesitate to ask for, for a movie here, for a pair of shoes there. Their parents willingly grant them to them, under the pretext that they have more needs than their sisters…
We lend less to women
When they later launch a business, the miracle happens again: they raise funds more easily than women. “This market is that of testosterone,” observes Catherine Abonnenc, former president of the Femmes Business Angels network. Women sell fewer dreams and big returns than men.” Today, in Europe, 1.8% of risk capital invested is devoted to projects led by women which, as a bonus, are granted by the banks smaller loans. “These disparities are not only disconcerting, but also harmful to the economy as a whole,” asserts Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank in the latest issue of the “Financial Economics Review”. By limiting women’s access to financial resources, we slow down job creation and economic growth.”
With less financial assets and lower income, women invest less (read the interview on page 56). Even in low-risk products. The study conducted by Ifop for La France Mutualiste, in partnership with Bpifrance Le Lab, reveals that 31% of women surveyed have a life insurance contract (38% of men) and that 10% of them have a stock savings plan (19% of male respondents). Are they more cautious? “No,” says Catherine Abonnenc. They are more responsible. » Are they less familiar with the workings of finance? “Above all, they are less confident in their skills,” says Hélène Gherbi, the founder of Femca, the personal finance and investment training platform. The women’s press hardly encourages them: the vast majority of “money” articles talk about consumption, purchases, sales. Aggravating circumstance: the financial industry is still largely the preserve of men.
A distrust of the stock market
While stock market investments are the most profitable investment in the long term, women continue to be wary of them. They represent only 25% of the 1.7 million active individual investors in France (those having carried out, during the year, at least one transaction on the stock market), while they were still 30% in 2022, according to a study published last summer by the Financial Markets Authority (AMF). “This decline is due to the sharp increase in the population of active male investors under the age of 40, combined with the stability of the population of active female investors,” specifies the financial policeman. This is all the more regrettable since the latter are twice as inclined to integrate the famous ESG (environmental, social and governance) criteria into their investment decisions. A sign of the times, however: those under 40 are more tempted by the stock market. In 2024, 112,000 young women bet on listed shares – 40,000 more than in 2022, according to the AMF. So much the better for their assets and their future retirement. And so much the better for the economy.
