Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 0:01
All right, gals. I'm excited to talk to you again this week, and this is part two. It's episode 68, but it's part two of a series that I started last week that really goes through some of the big cultural shifts happening right now, the statistics to back them up, and the big question of what are we going to do with them, and I knew that this was going to be a big episode with lots to unpack, which is why I've split it up into two parts. So if you haven't listened to last week's episode, I would recommend that you start there. But you know what? If you're on a roll and you want to just continue here, and you never question what the universe has brought you day to day, and like this is the episode you started with, I'm happy that you're here too. Just know that there is an episode before this that goes through some things that might be helpful for today's episode. Welcome to the Satisfied Woman Podcast. I'm your host Alanna Kaivalia. This podcast is dedicated to helping women lean into their femininity and rediscover the power of their feminine gifts. We take a look at what it means to be a modern woman, and how we can live a satisfied life on our own terms. Visit the hub at thesatisfiedwoman.com. Now, I want you definitely to go check out my website if you haven't yet, there's lots there for you. I write blogs every week. Obviously, I've got this podcast every week. There's a link to go grab my book, The Way of the Satisfied Woman. But most importantly, there is a link to book a call with me. You don't have to have all of the answers before you book the call. Just book the call, come talk, and I want to talk to you about where you may not yet be living into this future that we are quite in the middle of right now. So women have been shifting the needle in some pretty major ways over the last 40 or 50 years because of some big cultural shifts that have occurred, not just legally but social, culturally, and expectations being different, and these are major. These are things that we've never seen before as humans, let alone in any generation that remembers. And in fact, depending on the age you are, as you watch or listen to this podcast, you may have actually been witness to some of these shifts happening in your lifetime. In fact, unless you are pretty much below the age of like 20, listening to this podcast in your lifetime, you will have seen these major needles moving. And what that means is there's not yet a context necessarily for what to do with them. How do we live with these shifts, how do we take advantage of them? There isn't a well-worn path, but ladies, that's why I wrote the book. Okay, it's here. That's why I created the movement. That's why I've been doing this research for the last 20 years. That's why I've been working specifically with women for the last decade to help create lives that are sovereign and satisfied. Because we need to wear this trail down so the women behind us can follow it more easily. Men have had that for millennia. A man knows what it takes to be successful. We have lots of examples of successful men, so many, and it's not that we don't have examples of successful women, but they're fewer and further between, and many of them were still playing by the patriarchal rules or the masculine rules of success. Which guess what? Those aren't our rules. They they they were never made for us. They weren't made with us in mind. And when when woman plays by those rules, she's putting on way too much masculine armor. She's not being true to herself. She's not staying authentic to her body, her psychology, her rhythms. There's a different way to do it, and it doesn't mean less success. It certainly doesn't mean less sovereignty, and what it does mean is far greater satisfaction. Okay, but because we don't have a well-worn path like men do, you and I-and I'm talking right to you-we've got to hustle and create it.
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 4:12
We need to wear those ruts down on that trail so that it becomes easier for us as we settle into those grooves, but so that the women behind us can do it too, okay? Because there's major needles moving, and I'm telling you, within the last few decades, things that I've been alive for have shifted, things we've never seen. So I'm going to go through a few of these statistics, and I named them last week. I'm going to put them in the show notes. Don't feel like you have to write them all down. Just absorb them and hear them. And these are like these are big statistics. I didn't dig hard to find them. These are from things like the U.S. Census Bureau or the Pew Research Center or the CDC or literal dates in history. Okay, these aren't cosmic, weird, like out there fringe statistics. Okay, these are basic. So, in 50 short years, American women have shifted the age that they first get married by seven years. In 1975, the average woman was 21 when she got married the first time. In 2025, it was 28. Huge signifier that women are saying, you know what? I don't need to have partnership right away. I'd like to live a little life, maybe go get some education or travel the world or do something other than get thrown right into relationship. Among women born from 1940 to 1944, 80% were married by the age of 20-five, but 50 years later, women born from 1990 to 1994 only 30% were married by the age of 20-five. As of 2021, only one in 440-year-olds had ever been married. Among women under 50 who say they're unlikely to have children, 60-4% say a major reason is that they simply don't want to. They simply don't want to. Think of the power of that. They are choosing. They are looking around and saying, "You know what? Kids aren't for me, and they can. I talk about my grandmother a lot, right? I dedicated my book to her. She didn't have that choice. In fact, it was astonishing to me when she revealed in my early 20s that had she been able to choose, she would not have chosen to have children. Obviously, I'm grateful she did. Here I am. I loved my Baba. She was amazing, but it just really hit home in terms of the fact that she didn't have the choices that we do today. Now, whether you choose to have children or not, I'm glad that you have the choice, whether you choose to have children early or later, I'm thrilled that you have the choice. But the statistics coming out, like, and they're all kind of flooding the internet right now, which is why I was like, hang on a second, I need to pull this together because I'd heard one here, I'd heard one there. Obviously, I've come across a lot of this in my own research the last 20 years. I've lived a lot of it myself. I knew it was percolating, but there's something about seeing this huge body of data that is so validating. And I was like, I have to reveal to my podcast listeners, guys, we are on the right track, and there are some brave and powerful women over the last 40 years, who have swung that needle so far that it is undeniable. It's undeniable. Women are choosing not to get married. They're choosing to delay marriage. They're choosing to delay childbirth. They're choosing to not have kids. You know, and it really the the kind of inflection point happens in the 60s and 70s when we were finally given the choice to choose for ourselves pregnancy through contraception and to choose for ourselves or to actually have control over our own money. So in 1974, it became illegal for any bank to discriminate against someone based on their marriage status or their gender, a lot of banks would not allow a woman to have her own checking account without a male cosigner. And in fact, until 1988, a woman couldn't have her own business loan without a male family member cosigning for it. I mean, I want to go back and talk to Mary Kay. She was quite the business legend, by the way. If you don't know her story, she's incredible. She started Mary Kay, Mary Kay Cosmetics.
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 8:46
She is the reason why the pink Cadillac is a dream car for many young women. I know it was for me as a little girl. Um, according to this, she probably would have started that business because her husband signed the papers for her and with her. The fact that we can do this all on our own is not just game-changing, but life-changing, culture-shifting, accountability elevating. A lot of things have to really change because we as women can do things ourselves now. Now I'm not saying we can do this ourselves. And look, I was raised in the early '80s, where you know this was sort of fresh on the scene, and everyone was banging the drum of you know you're a woman, you can do anything, you can be whatever you want. You know I'm sure at some point in my early childhood, I think I definitely wanted to be Shira, princess of Power, but I also wanted to be an astronaut, and I went so far as to study astronomy and physics in college at rocket science because I thought it would be fun to be an astronaut. But you know, things went a different way, and I am doing this now, and I'm very grateful to be doing this. But. What has been true as well for the last 50 years that even though we can, it hasn't necessarily been made easier. And one of the big reasons it hasn't been made easier is because even though some of the laws and maybe the norms have shifted, a lot of the cultural and historic expectations haven't. So again, depending on the age you are, as you listen to this podcast, you may still have grown up with a huge expectation and narrative of as a woman, your job is to find a husband and have kids, right? Or as a woman, your job is to minimize yourself in the workplace. Don't speak up because you'll be called bitchy. Or your job as a woman is to defer to other people or be submissive in some way, in a way that doesn't serve you. That's that's all still there, you know. And it it's like we're we're kind of we're kind of in the aftermath. We're in the aftershock of these things happening, and we don't have enough evidence of okay. Here's what we do now on our terms to exactly know what we do now. That's what I help women with. Okay, that's what I help women with. I help women take advantage of the power, agency, and choice that they have, so that they can make the best choices for themselves and their highest good every time. Because when we don't have power, agent, power and agency, we can't make good choices for ourselves. That's when we compromise ourselves. That's when we overwork ourselves. That's when we write ourselves out of the equation, put our needs last, and burn out. So, you've heard me talk. Well, hopefully you've heard me talk. This is episode 60-eight, guys. Like we've been in this for a while, and if you've read my book or you've heard my podcast, you know that one of the big foundational principles of life as a satisfied woman are the four keys. Every woman, in order to approach any semblance of sovereignty or satisfaction, has to have four keys present at all times. They are not nice to haves; they are have to haves. They are safety, security, trust, and cherishing. Okay, I go through all four of these here in my book, also in previous podcasts. I won't spend too much time on it now, but I want to focus on safety and security because historically, again, prior to about 50 years ago, perhaps in your lifetime, definitely in your mother's lifetime, safety and security were largely negotiated through relationship to a man, and whether that was your intimate partnership or through a masculine family member, men held agency over money. They controlled money. Women did not necessarily have great access to money unless she had some sort of exception or generational wealth, or she was one of the few exceptions in history. Phew, this this was not the norm, and even today, I still speak with women today.
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 12:47
Right, I work directly with women to help build lives of sovereignty and satisfaction, and I still have women today calling me saying they don't have agency over their own money. Their their husband is controlling it. Their family has locked it down. They don't know how they're gonna get the money to leave a scary situation to choose what's next for them to raise their kids? I have women who are married to men who have children from another relationship. The men will not allow them to dig into that account to help their previous children. What? Okay. Well, then, lady, we got to get you your own cash, so you can do what she wants. You can make great choices for your kids. Like it's still really happening, right? It's still these truths that we've lived culturally for so long are still active. We're in the aftermath because remember, our patriarchal culture that we live in, our our current cultural paradigm. It wasn't made with women in mind. It wasn't made for our highest good or our benefit. This the workplace as we know it, the road to success. None of that was made with a woman in mind. It wasn't made with her body, her energy, her life in mind. It wasn't made with the fact that if she bears children and raises them. That's going to basically take a lot of her energy, time, and her capacity for the better part of two years. She's not compensated for that. It's hard for her to get back into the workforce after that. Like the whole thing was not made and built for us. So prior to about 50 years ago, in order for a woman to really secure a sense of safety and security. It was negotiated through a relationship with man. And in fact, I will say, and I want to note here, because this is not in no way is any of my work anti-men. Men are amazing. Masculinity and femininity can be distorted in ways that don't serve either of us, and much of the cultural paradigm distorts masculinity to where it doesn't serve them either. Okay, it doesn't serve them either. So the highest forms of masculine security and safety are providership and protection. Nowadays, we don't. Necessarily need providership in the form of money, and we don't necessarily need protection in the form of like physical. I'm going to kill that bear for you. We need a secure, safe, masculine home. We need to be at home with you. We need to be seen by you. We need to know that we can be exactly who we are without shame, without oppression, without guilt, without being called crazy-that is a lot of where providership and protection come from now for the modern woman, from the healthy masculine partner. But historically, a woman without dependable masculine protection and providership was lost. She needed to have. I mean, everybody needs safety and security. So, oftentimes, historically, prior to 50 or so years ago, a woman would have stayed or entered into a relationship in order to secure protection and providership, safety and security, because there wasn't a way for her to do it herself, but today we can do it for ourselves. I'm not saying we shouldn't be in relationship. I love relationship for women. Are you kidding me? I mean, I think two humans, a healthy masculine and feminine psyche, together in relationship, like they're unstoppable. They're amplifying each other's best gifts. They're working with the natural polarities that are embedded within all of us as humans. I'm all for it. It becomes complicated when one or the other side has a distorted sense of polarity. Right. That's when we don't like it. That's when women historically, traditionally become oppressed, suppressed, repressed, and masculinity becomes controlling, overbearing, and powerful in ways that are actually harmful as opposed to beneficial. So today, a woman without dependable masculine protection and providership has to be able to provide safety and security for herself, and she can. And the mechanism with which she does that today is money. Is money now? I'm not one of these coaches. Look, you know I'm on social media sometimes. I'm not on a lot of social media, by the way, you guys, and that's by choice. I hate that stuff. I really do. I'm on YouTube, but like, I don't do Facebook or Instagram or any of those other ones.
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 17:27
I just I can't. That's a whole other podcast. But I've seen some of these coaches out there who are like, oh my gosh, you know, you got to scale your thing to seven figures and hustle harder and work more, and that's still just more of that masculine success paradigm that doesn't work for us. That that's not what I do. I coach women to create businesses and make money in order to give them the ability to choose what is best for themselves. A woman today without access to money is not sovereign. She's not. A woman today without access to money cannot establish her own sense of security and safety. She will end up compromising herself in order to try to attain those things. I don't want that for any woman. I don't want that for any human. I really don't, but I work specifically with women, and you are who I'm here to take care of and protect. Okay, so this isn't about like hyper ambition. I mean, look, I want all the money for everybody. I love money, and there's no reason a woman can't make a ton of money through that magnetic, attractive, and I mean like to attract and bring in money. Not you have to look pretty. Attractive sense of abundance. Abundance really is a high, high feminine quality. And when women are in their full feminine power, they are attracting abundance. They are magnetizing the money that they need. That's what I help women do, all right? Because you're all sitting on a gold mine. It's my work to help you unlock it and get the money that you need in order to make the best choices for yourself. Because women have lived without choice for too long. Money allows women to live somewhere safe, and that's more important for us, isn't it? Because safety is difficult as a woman. Every woman knows when she walks out the door, she's got to check and make sure that her perimeter is safe and clear. Every woman knows that when she walks down the street, she has the potential of you know not being safe. We we we live with that hyper vigilance. Money allows a woman to leave someone dangerous or a dangerous situation. Money allows a woman to decide whether or not she wants to have children. Money allows a woman to obtain her best medical care. To recover from some sort of life disruption or catastrophe, to refuse work that is beneath her. Money allows a woman to build her business, to protect her time and her energy, and to choose a partnership fully based on love and connection rather than mere survival. So safety and security were historically obtained for women through attachment to a masculine partner, but in their highest form, the masculine does that naturally. They still remain profoundly valuable to us. I'm not trying to convince you to do everything alone. In fact, doing everything alone is really hard. We're still not level. It's better, but it's not equal. And a woman alone has it much harder than a woman in a really secure, satisfying, safe partnership that's on her terms that empowers her as much as her partner. And I would gladly opt into additional protection and providership from an extraordinary masculine partner, because doing this all ourselves is friggin' exhausting, you guys. But the distinction is that today we can choose it, and we can choose well, and we can choose with our best interests in mind, not out of survival or necessity. Providership can be welcomed without becoming the price of our submission. A man's provision or a partner's provision becomes additive to our life, enriching to our life, not the condition upon which we're permitted to have a life or exist. So when a partner isn't present, money becomes the infrastructure that is our safety and security. That's why a woman's financial sovereignty is not merely a business topic; it is central to feminine satisfaction. Right. So when I talk about getting a woman to make money, building her business, yeah, we're building a business, but we're doing it so that she has sovereignty and the power of choice. I mean, and this is new, you guys. We need to do this now because women really haven't been able to do it before. I mean, think about it.
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 22:18
In 1988, I was eight years old when the Women's Business Ownership Act strengthens a woman's ability to obtain business credit without requiring a male relative's signature. This is an ancient history. I was alive. You were probably alive. Women have only had a few decades to learn what it means to actually wield money independently on our own, so it's no it's it's no surprise that we still have a lot of inherited fear, shame, confusion. This expectation that we will under earn, that we have to overperform, that we have to prove ourselves somehow, that we have to stay silent to not be a bitch, that we can't speak up, otherwise we'll be fired. That we need them to sign our paycheck because we can't make it on our own. We're still beholden to our employers, and that is not power or a choice. We still have some expectation underlying that someone else is going to rescue us. We're not looking at like 1000s of years of history of female financial sovereignty. The men have that. We don't. We're looking at its infancy, guys. It's barely just come upon us, so we've only just obtained the legal right to earn, own, keep, and wield money. But it's time for us to exercise that right, to lock it into place, to show the world who we are as women, and not just show the world, show our sisters next to us and the women coming up behind us. So this makes us incredibly responsible for choosing well, because your life belongs to you now, but that freedom remains theoretical until you have the financial power to act on your choices, so you need that financial power. If you are in a situation where you do not have financial sovereignty, where someone else is controlling your money, you're working your tail off to make a paycheck, but they're benefiting off of you, where the men around you earn more and you earn less, where you're slaving away the job that has a ceiling, where you're in a situation you can't get out of because you don't have the finances to do so. I want to talk to you. You don't have to have it all figured out. Come book a call with me. Head to thesatisfiedwoman.com. Let's chat. Let's figure this out. Let's figure out where your sovereignty lies. Let's figure out the gold mine that you're sitting on because women are powerful, and more than that, we're valuable. I know. I know. I mean, I talk to women every week. The women I talk to are incredibly educated. They have certificates. They have decrees. They have wisdom. They have lived experience. They are often already providing services to others for free that they should be charging for. If you've got someone coming to you over and over for the same kind of request or the same kind of advice, sister, it's time to monetize that. This is your path, not just to freedom, but to sovereignty and to the power of your choice. And it is what women have been fighting for since time immemorial. It's what my grandmother would have given anything to have: the ability to choose what is best for you. Because the moment you don't have safety and security, your choices become compromised. So let's make sure that happens for you, because as we live into this future that is happening now, the needle is moving now. As we show the world, yes, these are our terms. This is how a woman wants to live a life. This is what we choose. We make it easier for all the women next to us and all those who come behind us. I want your life to be extraordinary and sovereign and satisfied, and I know that when you choose that, you empower other women to make the same choice. So come, let's talk at thesatisfiedwoman.com, and until next time, do everything you can to stay sovereign and satisfied.
