How Much Money Women Are Losing By Not Investing
The gender investment gap is real. Here’s how to close it.
My mother swears by her investment guy. His name is Al and for as long as I can remember, he came over once a year to sit at our dining room table and help my mom make informed decisions about her investment portfolio.
My father was not allowed to sit in on these meetings. My dad is entirely risk-averse; so much so that, even though my mother was Al’s client, it was not unusual for Al to receive anxious calls from my father, panicking about some failing stock. Eventually, my father and Al had to hash out some personal boundaries.
My parents’ relationship with wealth management is not gender typical. Generally speaking, women are better savers: 73% of working women participate in their employer-sponsored retirement plans, versus 66% of men. Women are also more likely to invest larger chunks of their income in savings than men are. But when it comes to the stock market, men dominate while women hesitate.
How women fell behind
For years, the underlying narrative about female investors centered on the idea that women are too emotional, too financially illiterate and too risk-averse to be successful. These financial myths have since been debunked; women…
