Pazit: Empowering Jewish Women

Some of you may have noticed that one of the sponsors of next week's presentation on the Jewish Economics Survey is a new organization called Pazit. Pazit (www.Pazit.org) is a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering Jewish women to take control of their financial futures.

Last week, I drove to Philadelphia to spend some time with my grandfather, who was very active in Jewish communal affairs over the last 65 years or so, while my grandmother got hip surgery after a fall. I was talking to him about the survey, and I mentioned Pazit and its purpose, and he noted while nodding that it's a serious problem: Many Jewish women are brought up with the attitude that the husband is in charge of the finances, despite the fact that many of them are the ones managing the day-to-day finances and bills. As the website says, it's important to empower Jewish women to transcend stereotypical roles and take control of their finances.

Interestingly, since I added a couple of questions about how aware a person thinks they are of their finances a couple of weeks ago, over 3/4 of men but just 2/3 of women answered "Pretty Good" or "I've Got It Covered". (32% of the men and just over 1/4 of the women answered "I've Got It Covered"; 8% of men and 13% of women answered "Not Good" or "Poor".)*

If you're interested in learning more and attending upcoming money management workshops and other events, sign up for the Pazit Google Group on the Pazit homepage.

* Also interesting, at least to me, is that men were more likely to downgrade their opinion of their grasp of their financial situation after taking the survey, while women were more likely to upgrade theirs.