Yesterday a friend showed me Ellevest, which bills itself as an investing service for women. Their tagline:

Thank goodness! The scourge of mansplaining in automated investing will be vanquished!

I find this extremely disturbing, because it’s pure pandering. As far as I can tell, Ellevest is just a fee-charging software layer on top of a basket of Vanguard ETFs. The terms and conditions explain that Ellevest pulls their recommendations from Morningstar. I’m sure Ellevest itself does something, but I’m very skeptical of whether the something it does is valuable.

They claim on the homepage, “We’re not just ‘shrinking and pinking’ an old investment model. We’ve built a whole new approach.” No, you haven’t! You’re just Vanguard with better UX and cynical marketing!

Look, I’m a woman. I believe misogyny exists and I agree that it’s fucked up for finance to be overwhelmingly dominated by men. I consider myself a feminist. I could get behind an investing service that was ethically women-oriented, like a version of faith-based investing.

But that’s not what Ellevest is. Ellevest is normal investing with a ladylike veneer. (Notice all the curly fonts?) Sure, I bet they employ more women than the average fintech company. But they also exploit a historically disadvantaged group, one that’s low on financial literacy, in order to offer a return to their own VCs.

I’ve talked before about how I love the internet’s ability to serve every niche. This is not what I meant.