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The proportion of women hitting the financial buffers is rising alarmingly, according to the UK’s seventh largest accountancy and professional services firm.In the second quarter of 2011 14,827 women were declared bankrupt, obtained a debt relief order or took out an individual voluntary arrangement, figures from RSM Tenon showed.As a result, women now account for 48 per cent of personal insolvencies – the highest proportion since 2007, when the firm began recording the data.


Facing insolvency: Women are more vulnerable


Some studies suggest that as recently as 2002, women constituted 32 per cent of bankruptcies.
'On the one hand, spending habits and
attitudes to debt have changed over the past generation while women have
achieved ever greater levels of financial independence,' said Mark
Sands, Head of Personal Insolvency at RSM Tenon.
'As women become more independent,
lenders see them as a more lucrative market. So, although it’s not the
whole story, there’s an element of truth that the offer of buying
handbags with pricey store cards is sending more and more women bust.'
Women now outnumber men in the
youngest age groups (18-25 and 26-35) showing that this trend is set to
continue into the future.
'In the early part of the recession,
more women than men were made redundant, and some studies have claimed
that government spending cuts instituted during the recovery period have
a disproportionate effect on single parents – nine out of ten of whom
are female,' says Sands.  'Also, more women than men work part-time, and in a downturn,
part-time and shift workers are more likely to be cut.
'So, across the board, women are
caught in a pincer movement which leaves them more vulnerable, either to
sending themselves into insolvency by financial mismanagement, or to
being forced into insolvency by poverty.'