New research has indicated that almost half of women are not intending to save any money into a pension or invest this year.
Despite the gender pay gap being at an all time low, 43% of women asked about their annual financial plans stated that they had no intention to put aside any funds into an ISA, pension or similar investment product. 18% of those asked stated that they were unsure if they’d make any investments at all during this financial year.
Past studies have revealed the most popular reasons behind the lack of female investment, namely one conducted by Crowdstacker. Whilst a preference for cash accounts and ISAs was the top reason at just under a third (32%), a lack of confidence and investment awareness were not far behind at 14% and 18% respectively.
Of the women who are planning to invest this year, the majority (54%) are intending to invest a maximum of £2500. This can be contrasted to the male response, where almost half (44%) of those surveyed stated that they would be investing twice this amount.
Whilst the gender pay gap may have declined, the difference between the number of men and women saving into a pension is significant. The survey revealed that just 11% of women are putting aside money into a workplace pension this year compared to 17% of men. When it comes to personal pensions, the proportion of men saving is more than twice that of women; 9% compared to just 4%.
Commenting on the research was Karteek Patel. The CEO of Crowdstacker highlighted potential reasons behind the gender disparity, as well as the importance of pension saving.
“There is still a significant pay gap between men and women of about 9.4%. However, although this has been decreasing steadily over recent years it is still not translating into women increasing their investing. We asked people about a broad range of investment products with varying degrees of risk, but what we found was that women are less likely than men to invest across all product types, even those deemed relatively low risk such as Cash ISAs. This means they are potentially missing out on benefits such as higher return opportunities, or tax efficiency, from the array of products on the market such as the Innovative Finance ISA.
“There are several reasons we believe this might be happening. For example, some women may generally have a lower risk tolerance. Perhaps some have to shoulder a higher share of the burden than men for living expenses meaning they have less spare cash to invest. And from our previous research we can see clearly that some women feel less confident about investing.”
“What is clear from the study is that with social factors such as increasing life expectancy and rising costs of old age care, it is important that everyone engages with saving and investing to ensure they are in the best position possible to meet the costs of retirement.”
