When Hilary Black ditched her boyfriend two years ago she didn’t exactly expect sympathy – she was, after all, breaking his heart – but she assumed her girlfriends would rally round, assuring her she’d done the right thing.

Instead her decision was met with gasps of surprise and barely disguised disapproval. The boyfriend concerned was rich, you see. Very rich. “One of my friends actually said, ‘Are you crazy? This guy could take care of you for life!’” says Black.

“These were thirtysomething women who would never publicly advocate marrying for money yet they implied that I was making a mistake. It was interesting: it seemed a sign that women have a more complicated relationship with money than they let on.”

Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse would have understood. Marriage once was – and in some societies still is – a contract that involves careful assessment of assets on both sides. Austen’s heroines frequently have to set aside their feelings for attractive young men without money and instead set their sights on men who can provide them with material wealth.

But in 2009? Forty or so years of feminism, the flood of women into the workforce, success in education, the ethos of self-reliance; that must add up to something, surely?

“We may have come a long way since Jane Austen’s time, when a woman’s future depended on landing a husband with a reliable income, but the notion of finding a wealthy Prince Charming still lingers,” says Black.

“The idea of self-reliance is out there but it hasn’t caught on in the quick, easy way you might have thought it would. When I started talking to my friends about this I discovered that there is a lot of confusion.

“Boys are told you can be a train driver or an astronaut but essentially you have to get out there and earn a living. Girls are now told they can be an astronaut too, but if they want to they can also stay home with the children. They don’t know what they want to do or what they’re meant to do: there’s a lot of uncertainty behind the confidence.”

Black, a New York magazine editor, was so intrigued by her friends’ reactions to her romantic upheavals that she asked a number of them to write essays about the way money quietly drove or permeated their most intimate relationships. The resulting book, The Secret Currency of Love, just published in America, gives a fascinating glimpse into women’s lives, every bit as relevant in Britain as across the pond.

“I’d had lunch with these women a hundred times and I didn’t know any of this stuff,” says Black. “We talk about religion; we talk about sex; we talk about politics. But money really is one of the last taboos.”

Some of the women write about how money influenced their choice of boyfriends or husbands. Or how their parents used money to control them. Or how vying for a legacy shaped the relationship between sib-lings. But common to all of them is a notable – almost wilful – ignorance about handling money day to day. Women are not just reluctant to talk about money, it seems; they don’t even want to think about it.

“I’ve cultivated a cocooning haziness about the family finances,” writes Laurie Abraham, a senior editor at Elle. “Every time I pay our nanny, I have to say, ‘How much is it?’ Or I’ll say, ‘I’ll sign the cheque. Can you just fill in the amount?’ I feel so much better when I don’t have to ink out that large sum. It’s like it’s not happening.”

Abby Ellin confesses “a mortifying admission, especially for a feminist who was taught that every woman should possess both her own bank account and the ability to be self-sufficient. On some level, I always believed that eventually, someone else would take care of the big stuff. And that someone, of course, would be my husband”.

Laura Fraser reveals: “Some women wake up at 45 and realise they forgot to have children. I forgot to make money.”

It may be a cliché to say that women don’t know their gilts from their bonds but it appears – even among educated, sophisticated women – to be broadly true. And they lack confidence in their ability to handle money. “Although I am, as of three years ago, paying a mortgage and supporting my family – I’ve even made a will and set money aside for the retirement I’m sure I’ll never earn – at the core of my soul I believe myself to be a financial cretin,” says the novelist Julia Glass.

Why should that be? Karen Pine, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Hertfordshire and co-author of Sheconomics, a new financial self-help guide for women, says it is because women often use money in an emotional rather than logical way. “I was surprised at mindless shopping, the number of women who said they’d gone out and bought something only to come home and discover something almost identical in their wardrobe.

“The way some women talked about shopping reminded me of research I’d done on eating disorders. They said they’d go on ‘shopping binges’ then come home and feel guilty and sick and take it all back again. There was a sort of ‘shopping hangover’ next day. Not surprising really, as food and money activate the same reward systems in the brain.”

That, and an army of marketing men who have spent years homing in on women’s weak spots, persuading them that they’re “worth it”. A friend says she has a “L’Oréal moment” at the end of every week. “Jobs, children, we all work so hard these days,” she says. “A glass of wine, a new mascara – you need your little treat.”

And, bizarrely, that extends even to women in financial trouble. Katie Clark, a former debt counsellor whose Sixty-minute Debt Buster will be published this month, says that in her days working in a support centre in Cardiff she saw a number of women who could not stop spending. “Women were definitely more susceptible to retail therapy,” she says. “Even when they were up to their eyeballs in debt they’d go and buy themselves something. They felt they deserved it because they were under such pressure – but the pressure came from being so badly in debt.”

Some women, of course, buck the trend. Interviewed for the Fame and Fortune column in our Money section recently, the glamour model Caprice Bourret impressed with her astute financial brain. And Amanda Staveley, a former girlfriend of Prince Andrew, recently made headlines when she brokered a deal for the purchase of Manchester City football club, reportedly earning herself and her partners in her private equity firm some £10m.

It was just one of a string of lucrative deals for Staveley, who says she is baffled by women who don’t make the effort to understand their finances, let alone the financial markets.

“To me, my sense of self-reliance is critical. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to be responsible for me,” she says. “I’m getting to the point in my life where there’s no mortgage, no debt. I had difficulties with money when I was young and it terrified me, so now it doesn’t matter how much of a cash mountain I have, it’s never enough.”

Not just young women but everyone should be taught the basics of handling their finances at school, Staveley says, and be warned about the dangers of easy credit. “Unfortunately, we’ve all grown up at a time when wherever you went you were offered a store card – it was crazy,” she says. “I barely use a credit card. We do have them but tend to use debit cards. Everyone in my company is aware of my obsession with strict cash-flow management.”

Black’s young women friends dream of Prince Charming: Staveley allegedly turned down a real prince, believing that if she married Andrew, royal protocol would cramp her style. No Austen compromise for Staveley – isn’t her way what we’d all want for our daughters? And ourselves?

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