The turning point came in mid-2024, says Stephanie Wilks-Wiffen of eToro, after the annual Boring Money report showed the gender investment gap widening in the UK, with men accounting for almost 60% of investors. In response, eToro launched its “Loud Investing” campaign to educate and encourage women to invest — one of many recent efforts by brokers, podcasters and sponsors to engage female savers. “The more the merrier,” Wilks-Wiffen says. “If our messaging doesn’t land with someone, maybe someone else’s does.”
Women have long been underrepresented in investment markets. Today men hold roughly two-thirds of stocks. Structural barriers help explain that imbalance: women tend to earn less, receive less financial education and score lower on some measures of financial literacy. Historical exclusion also matters — in the UK, for example, women were barred from trading floors and required a father’s or husband’s consent to open bank accounts until the mid-1970s.
Rethinking the narrative
Part of the industry response has been to change how it talks about women and money. “It’s a simple shift in rhetoric,” Wilks-Wiffen says. Platforms are emphasizing traits often associated with female investors, such as patience and discipline, and featuring more women in educational content to make investing feel more accessible. Firms are also trying to address the psychological barriers that deter many first-time investors.
Challenging stereotypes with evidence helps too. Professor Ylva Baeckström of King’s College London warns against treating people as fixed stereotypes: “If we treat people like stereotypes, eventually we risk them becoming the stereotype.” Research shows men are more likely to engage in short-term trading and take concentrated risks that can hurt returns, while women’s steadier approaches often pay off. A Warwick Business School study found women outperform men by about 1.8 percentage points.
Women also tend to invest differently, putting more weight on sustainability and ESG factors and thinking about money in broader, long-term terms. “Women just really think about their money in a very different way. Yet, we’re not seeing those needs being served,” says Christine Yu, co-founder of financial education firm Sophia. Women are more likely to seek advice at key life stages such as childbirth, divorce or widowhood.
A commercial incentive to close the gap
Brokers have a clear financial motivation to reach more female clients. Baeckström notes the World Economic Forum estimates financial services could capture an additional $700 billion in revenue by better serving women. As wealth transfers from baby boomers accelerate, especially in Asia, women’s financial assets are expected to grow rapidly — a major opportunity for firms that can retain them. “They need to improve services to women, because otherwise women will walk away, and they often do when they inherit wealth,” she says.
But those dynamics mainly affect people who already have investable assets. Stock market participation varies widely between countries: about 60% of the US population say they own stocks, compared with roughly 20% in Germany and only about 5% of households in India.
Influencers and online communities
Beyond established brokers, a new ecosystem of financial influencers and online communities has sprung up, many aimed specifically at women. “What does that tell you? It tells you that there is a need that is not being met,” Yu says. These spaces can lower barriers and make investing feel more relatable, but they also present risks: advice from unregulated creators can be biased, incomplete or even fraudulent.
Are efforts translating into more women investing?
There are signs of change, particularly among younger cohorts. Leah Zimmerer, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Mannheim, says the gender investment gap is smaller for younger people. In Germany, for instance, slightly more women began investing than men last year, though the total numbers remain lower: about 5.4 million women versus 8.7 million men. Younger investors are also more likely to use digital brokers; under-40s in Germany hold the lion’s share of stock market investments.
In the US, JP Morgan reports a sharp rise in stock ownership among 25-year-olds, from 6% in 2015 to 37% in 2024. The Covid pandemic helped accelerate app downloads for platforms like Robinhood, Webull and Fidelity as younger adults faced inflation, high living costs and concerns about retirement.
Caveats and the life-cycle pattern
Experts caution that early gains among young women may not persist. The gender investment gap tends to widen with age, peaking around the 40s and 50s — a life stage when women are often more tied to family roles and less likely to manage household finances. The gap frequently narrows later in life after divorce or widowhood, when women take greater control of assets. Whether Gen Z women will buck that life-cycle pattern remains uncertain.
Baeckström urges sustained action rather than complacency: “We can’t be comfortable in the possibility of a short-term trend becoming a long-term phenomenon. We need to make big improvements in order to level the playing field.”
The road ahead
Efforts by brokers, educators and online communities are making investing more visible and appealing to women, and younger generations show the smallest gaps so far. But structural obstacles — pay inequality, education gaps and historical exclusion — continue to limit participation for many. Closing the gender investment gap will likely require a mix of targeted outreach, better financial products and protective regulation for new online advice channels, plus broader progress on income and educational equity. If firms and policymakers move together, the coming decade could see meaningful gains — but sustained change will depend on turning early interest into long-term participation.