What Miquita Oliver’s bankruptcy tells us about women and money

In addition to the explicit and implicit gender biases in taxation policies, financial illiteracy is still rife, writes Emma Clarke. And it is women who suffer the most

“I knew nothing about tax – absolutely nothing,” Miquita Oliver said on her Miss Me? podcast this week, reflecting on how she went bankrupt aged 27. “I come from parents who know nothing about tax. They didn’t think to ask me whether I was paying tax on the money that I was earning, and I was earning a lot of money. I didn’t ask.”

Now 40, Oliver explained how she was hit with a £170,000 bill after not paying her taxes for three years. As well as declaring bankruptcy, the presenter shared how she was forced to sell off personal possessions to repay her debt – adding that it wasn’t her accountant’s “fault” and that, despite his advice to put money aside each month, she “just stopped doing that” after a while.

Of course, her specific set of circumstances are not entirely relatable (sadly we’re not all “earning lots of money”, especially in our twenties), but her feeling that “this tax and VAT stuff is starting to intimidate me and scare me and I don’t understand it so I’m just going to start not paying it and hiding from it” certainly is. Particularly for women.

In 2024, the insolvency rate for women (26.5 per 10,000) was higher than the rate for men (22.1 per 10,000) – and this has been the case for 11 years running. The only age group where men had a higher insolvency rate was those aged 65 and over.

When it comes to bankruptcy, specifically, although historically more men have declared the financial status, the opposite has been true since 2021, with Covid exacerbating the issue.

Now, it may be tempting to fall into the gender stereotype trap – you know, the whole “girl math” trope, or the idea that women “love to shop”, or that we’re “no good with money”. But it’s not as simple as that.

While many governments have outlined various reforms, taxation laws and policies are still laden with both explicit and implicit gender biases. These systemic imbalances also extend to cultural ones, meaning that, still, women bear the brunt and financial illiteracy is rife.

I know I grappled with personal finance when I was younger. Although I had a part-time job from the age of 12 and felt relatively adept at managing money and budgeting, I had no clue where to begin with student finance when I set off for university. My parents couldn’t help me either – not through lack of desire, but because I was the first generation in my family to go. And although my sixth form was very adamant we all went on to further education, there was little provided in the way of practical help.

Going freelance full-time two years ago also meant expanding my knowledge of tax and self-assessments, and it took a colleague of mine to tell me about things like plugging gaps in my National Insurance contributions and single occupancy council tax discounts for me to fully take control of my finances. I’ve never been in debt (beyond my student loan), but I wouldn’t say I was savvy when it comes to money either.

Then there are the implications of joint taxation, where married couples or civil partners file joint declarations, which can decrease their overall tax burden for the household. In some instances, though, where pay disparity between partners is significant, the secondary earner or lower income earner – which tends to be women, with the current gender pay gap standing at 7 per cent – can be subject to a disproportionately higher marginal tax rate.

This, combined with the fact that women are eight times more likely to be the primary caregiver for children and also more likely to care for elderly family members (whether or not their blood relatives) – as well as the newly-announced welfare cuts, pension reforms, and ridiculously high childcare costs – deters them from entering full-time employment in the first place. Even those who do are more likely than not to be self-employed and face the HMRC nightmare that is self-assessment, because of their caregiver responsibilities. And that’s before we even get into how inheritance tax, capital gains tax, property ownership and consumption skew things, or how single mothers shoulder even more of the burden.

Yes, it could be argued that the knowledge gap extends beyond just women – only 6 per cent of 16-24-year-olds say they learnt about finance at school – and things like socio-economic background also factor in. But there’s still evidence that women and girls are not only disproportionately affected by systems in place, the assumption remains that men and boys should learn about things like taxes, mortgages and investing, because they are the main breadwinners.

This is such a disservice – not just because it limits women and makes them more susceptible to debt, but because it adds yet another obstacle when it comes to entering the workforce and enjoying a successful career. On the surface, it seems as though more women are becoming financially independent and have more agency when it comes to work and motherhood, among other things. But in reality, we’re still met with all kinds of setbacks.