Johanna, the voice behind Kate & Whio, believes women need to understand the big money picture

Kate and the blue duck

Kate Sheppard is a New Zealand heroine. Her 27-metre long petition won New Zealand women the vote in 1893. Unrolled to dramatic effect in Parliament, it inspired suffragettes around the world to follow our example.

Nearly 80 years later, in 1970, women won the right to equal pay. Sewing machinists at Ford’s UK Dagenham car factory won this landmark battle.

Women were starting to get to grips with money back then, but grasping the big picture has proved hard. There is a lot of personal finance advice for women now, but it needs to be linked to the big money picture. This means learning about stocks, bonds and other investments.

This is where Kate & Whio comes in.

But why a blog? Because online is where we go for information nowadays. Not many of us turn to the newspaper business pages. All that tricky jargon. It sounds like someone is trying to shut us out or pull a fast one. Indeed, sometimes they are doing just that.

I have worked for a banking publication for several years, and for The Australian Financial Review, and for finance watchdog the Financial Markets Authority (whose job is to stop the finance bad guys taking your money) so I know something about the money game. But this blog is still a journey into the world of money for me.

Would you like to join me? Together we may learn a thing or two. We may have the vote and many things our mothers and grandmothers never had, but we still don’t have proper control of our money.

And for that we need to better understand the world of finance.

But why the whio? This is the rare blue duck that adorns the back of the Kate Sheppard $10 note that recognises her contribution to New Zealand.

The whio – NZ’s rare blue duck adorns the ‘Kate Sheppard’ $10 note