MADE TO MEASURE

HEARD THE SAYING “IF YOU CAN’T MEASURE IT, YOU CAN’T IMPROVE IT”? FINANCIAL JOURNALIST AND ELLE’S NEW MONEY COLUMNIST BIANCA HARTGE -HAZELMAN IS TRACKING WOMEN’S ECONOMIC PROGRESS – AND SHE’S DOING HER BEST TO CLOSE THE GAP

BIANCA HARTGE-HAZELMAN has a personal reason for her work in fighting for women’s rights to equal pay and equal opportunity. “I grew up watching my mother struggle: she had one dress to her name; charities would deliver food hampers to us. It was horrible and I don’t want that for my children. I knew I wanted to give back.”

She’s now in a position to do just that. Hartge-hazelman is a former journalist for the Australian Financial Review and founder and editor of Financy, a women’s financial education platform she started after having the second of her now three daughters. She also created Financy’s Women’s Index, which tracks Australian women’s economic progress quarterly. “If you don’t track things, you can’t fix problems,” she says. “That’s why the Women’s Index came about.” It offers hard statistics about where women are at in Australian society, with vital information on how many females are on boards, the gender pay gap and the superannuation gap. But it’s not all graphs and tables: it also suggests actions that ordinary women can take to improve their financial future.

The report has been a labour of love for Hartge-hazelman for two years now and, she says, is not intended as a doomand-gloom rundown of how far behind men we are. “You don’t empower people with negativity. The fear factor only goes so far, and I really want to help women become fearless with money and the choices they make.” For example, Hartge-hazelman is happy to highlight that the gender pay gap is the lowest it’s ever been, and she credits the #Metoo and Time’s Up movements for the fact that the public – and the newspaper editors who cater to the public with their financial reporting – are more ready to hear about these issues than ever before. But she’s realistic about it, too: “As we continue to progress, we are going to have periods where we go backwards. The underemployment rate for women, for example, is worse than it was a decade ago – that’s women who are working 35 hours or less but want to work more. That’s 650,000 women with unrealised economic potential, and that’s a real concern. How can we better support women in their decision-making, in their earning capacity, in their career development and in leadership?”

Hartge-hazelman isn’t the only one fighting the good fight for equality – she name-checks the Workplace Gender Equality Agency as a hugely valuable fellow combatant, plus the high-profile economists on her advisory board. “There are lots of good people and organisations doing great things, but we need to keep pushing and being innovative to lead the way on this.”

And leading the way is her ultimate goal: “I want to grow the Index, I want to get it in front of more women, and men – because they’re critical to this whole story and we won’t get there if we don’t get there together. I want to get it into schools so they can look at the opportunities. When you have conversations about money sooner, you create education and empowerment among younger people – and the Women’s Index helps as it’s free, relevant and Australian.

“By embracing the Women’s Index and by going global with it, we can lead the way. That’s what gets me up in the morning – producing the Index and trying to inspire future generations, including my daughters, to be fearless with money and embrace the opportunities available to live better lives.” Visit financy.com.au to see the Women’s Index and for more on financial equality, head to financiallyfitfemales.com.au