Responsibility begins with "Her"

In the 80’s and 90’s it used to be fairly commonplace for Indian men to joke that they also have a CEO in their homes, even though they themselves may have held important posts and had fancy designations in their respective organizations. While such things may have been said in jest, it is unlikely that each of these men made investment decisions without the advice and consent of their spouses, because women have traditionally been considered as the voice of reason in most Indian households!

With the growing clamour about gender parity in the modern day, such jokes may not be commonplace anymore. The reason being, the said spouses now hold similar and even higher posts at their workplace. What has not changed though, is the fact that women continue to have a big role in investment decisions. They are now deftly playing the roles of money managers at home along with taking important decisions at their workplace. In fact, we can safely say that when it comes to financial responsibility women today need to lead from the front.

The unexplored potential

The numbers showing the participation of Indian women in the Indian workforce however are not very encouraging. The good news however is that, women are closing the higher education gap. #Among undergraduates in 2018-19 women represented 53% undergraduate degrees, 69.6% M.Phil degrees and 41.8% PhDs. Further, there is statistical evidence to prove that gender parity would have a bigger impact on India as compared to the any other region in the world.

Thus, it can be assumed that with education, financial awareness and active involvement of women in financial planning and investing is slated to rise.

Why women can actually make better investors

When it comes to investing too, a number of studies^ conducted in the past few years quell the myth that men are better at investments as compared to their female counterparts. Not only are women more prone to saving instinctively, they often emerge as better investors as compared to men. Fidelity, a financial services institution of global repute notes that women make better investors for what they call “inherently female” characteristics.

Women are long-term goal oriented- With the welfare of the family and security of children as a goal, women tend to be more conservative in their investment strategies.

Women are naturally risk averse- Rather than focussing on risky assets that would be more gratifying by way of short-term performance, women are prone to diversifying their portfolio that would yield moderate yet consistent returns.

Women exercise patience- By nature, women are not too fond of experimenting with their hard-earned money and are happy with status quo, unlike males who are more wont to experiment and churn their portfolios in pursuit of better returns. As a result, women are likely to save a lot by way of fees and have portfolios that outperform as compared to their male counterparts.

Winds of change

While these characteristics, as Fidelity notes, may not be significantly visible in women all around us, they do make better investors inherently. Back in the day, the men who earned the bread for the family, knew he could rely on his wife to save his back on a rainy day with a stash of cash, that she had been putting away in some clandestine location, if need be!

Ironically though, with patriarchy so deep-rooted in psyche, women in India have traditionally preferred to stay away from the realm of investments and have been happy to let the men in their families make decisions on their behalf. With winds of change and equality being the greatest need of the hour, time is ripe for women to come to the forefront and make investment decisions independently!

Source:
#catalyst.org
^medium.com & reuters.com

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