You Can’t Talk About Student Loan Debt Without Talking About Privilege

I took quite a few gender and women’s studies classes in college. This is probably no surprise to you, especially if you know me in real life and have had a conversation about anything from fashion (“Chanel dated a Nazi” is a phrase I love to throw around to people who are just trying to live their lives in chic, crisp lewks) to pop culture (“I loved the Queen’s Gambit, except for all the male gaze-y parts” is also a thing I say now).

This is just how women have nervous breakdowns! Source.

In 2007 I was learning all about the idea of positionality and intersectionality, long before some of these concepts would leak into the mainstream across social media and tiny screens. Learning about this before someone else doesn’t make me cool, just maybe 35 and a graduate of a women’s college.

Positionality is the notion that personal values, views, and location in time and space influence how one understands the world. In this context, gender, race, class, and other aspects of identities are indicators of social and spatial positions and are not fixed, given qualities.

Luis Sánchez, Encyclopedia of Geography

The TL;DR is your truth is defined by the contexts that have created your identity.

One of the things I’m advocating for is a discussion of our own positionality when we talk about student loan debt. Stating this usually unearths how we’re privileged, how we’re disadvantaged, and the various systems that have worked against us (or for us) to bring us to this exact moment in how we approach student loan debt.

Why should we even talk about privilege at all?

Let’s use me as an example.

Me, in my natural state on video chat in 2020.

I’m an able-bodied 35 year old, single woman, who grew up on the lower end of “middle class,” raised by a very tired single mom who did not have the energy or resources to chat financial security with me. I had no college savings, only grants, scholarships, and (yep) loans. Currently, I have no partner to split finances with, which means I pay the full cost of my rent, utilities, groceries, and taco orders.

I’m also a white woman, so I walk about in the United States largely protected from state-sanctioned violence, simply by the color of my skin being white. However, I still am part of the demographic that under-earns compared to men (Source):

• White women make 79 cents to a white man’s dollar.
• For Black women it’s 63 cents.
• For Latinas it’s 55 cents.

Fellow white women, it’s important to memorize these facts about the gender pay gap. It’s not just “women make 75 cents to a man’s dollar” anymore. The intersection of race and gender means different wage gaps to close. This is where remembering intersectional feminism and our positionality comes in handy.

I believe myself to be fairly paid at my current organization, a company that I started working at in part because I saw that they hired women in leadership and seemed to value DE&I. However, at previous roles at other companies I had evidence I was underpaid compared to my male colleagues. And, frankly, I got a little pissy about it and left.

Me, giving myself a pep talk.

But a gender pay gap also means the gender debt gap exists.

A man with comparable debt to me might be in a better position financially if he out-earns me, whereas I’m earning all the more interest because I’m not able to pay more monthly and hit that principal balance. A pay gap just simply does not exist in a silo to a debt gap. And, as Sallie Krawcheck would argue, this also means there’s an investing gap, too, where for myriad reasons (include not having that extra cash money) women are less likely than men to benefit from investing in the market. (Note: I’m using binary terms like “women” and “men” for the purposes of talking about historically how the gender gap gets portrayed, but let’s not forget that trans- people and non-binary people are impacted by the way gender affects finances.)

The author has some conflicting feelings about the fearless girl statue on Wall Street, but what the girl represents should be made permanent to forever challenge the bull.

But I still need to state my privilege and my position.

While I may have at times been disadvantaged by being a woman in the workforce, and by my upbringing that led me to take out loans in the first place, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that my career path and industry means I’m afforded a competitive salary in the United States, which positions me to actually make movement on my loans.

So when I talk about student loan debt, there’s probably a lot of experiences I shouldn’t speak for, including but not limited to:

• How people with disabilities or on disability manage student loans
• How racism impacts earning potential or student loan debt management
• What it means to be financially dependent on someone else while managing student loans
• How parenthood impacts student loans
• What it means to work in industries that are paid less competitively

That’s why we’re introducing the shame[less] student loan survey to anonymously collect information on our readership (or anyone you know with student loans) to help us think about topics that would be relevant and also help us understand the full range of experiences that shape student loan debt. After all, this is two able-bodied white women who are running this publication, and we want to make sure we are seeing all we can see.

In fact, if you’re interested in sharing your story with us and contributing, let us know.

Also, please feel free to join us for our first virtual event (TBD) by signing up on our contact form.

This could be us, on Zoom.

Part of taking back the narrative means showing the world that there is not one narrative, but several. And we need your help to do that. So, let’s rock and roll! (Or quietly, calmly pen a scathing takedown of the system.)