The bag lady bogeyman

First, the good news: Allianz Life’s 2013 Women, Money & Power Study recently found that 60 percent of women say they’re the primary breadwinner in their household today. And 57 percent of all women surveyed said they have more earning power than ever before.

Yay, women! Right?

Well, hold on. There’s also this: almost half of the women surveyed — 49 percent — said they still fear becoming a “bag lady.” Even among those earning more than $200,000 a year, 27 percent said they’re afraid they’ll eventually wind up broke and homeless.

Many of the women also seemed embarrassed by financial empowerment, with 42 percent saying financially independent women are intimidating to men and will likely end up alone. And 31 percent said those women are hard to relate to and don’t have many friends.

What’s more, single women were the most vulnerable-feeling and judgy of all, with 56 percent confessing bag-lady fears and fully 47 percent — almost half! — painting financially confident women as unmarriageable.

What?! So, basically, we have more control over more money than ever today. Yet, many of us aren’t confident we can handle the responsibility — and even if we can, we’re pretty sure we’ll become lonely spinsters in the process.

I’m going to go ahead and blame romantic comedies for at least part of this. We’ve watched too many movies where wimpy women solve their problems with marriage and every tough single woman is painted as a shoulder-pad-wearing harpy.

See also: 7 reasons women biz owners should start thinking big