“Our culture has countless strict gender roles, one of which is that men manage money and women don’t,” Aashka Piprottar, the founder of Boss Betis, told Wealthy Wolfe’s Parween Mander over email. “So while men get to discuss money openly and proudly, women, if they ever discuss it, do so in hushed, quick voices.”
Those gender roles convinced Aashka from a young age “that I was just destined to be ‘bad with money’ and I would just have to rely on my father — and then in the future, probably my husband — to manage the money for me,” she adds.
Boss Betis is a community-based platform to destigmatize the conversation around money, specifically the unique challenges faced by desi women. The platform wants to instill that financial freedom and literacy are essential to women’s empowerment.
While Wealthy Wolfe is a digital financial coaching & education platform for women of color from immigrant upbringings specifically.
Aashka also told Parween that she’s unlearned the harmful money narratives of her childhood through working in the wealth management and financial wellness space.
By 27, Parween had a $150,000 net worth, so she could support herself and her parents without feeling burdened. She advised that we must put on our financial oxygen masks first, as well as to start a “Parent fund” account to save money for our families in case they need it, “This is a way to set a financial boundary so that you don’t feel resentful or sabotaged if they require funds from you.” Parween wrote on Business Insider.
Understanding the complexity of the South Asian culture, Parween has helped one of her clients to set up strategic savings accounts to separate her money, while still contributing funds when her client’s parents asked for it.
Parween affirms that cultural expectations and narratives play a huge role in their ability as South Asian women to make different decisions, especially when it comes to their money and building wealth.
