This week, we sit down with Jessica Robinson, Founder and Managing Director of Moxie Future. Founded in 2016, Moxie Future is a platform to engage with and empower female investors to grow their wealth through responsible and sustainable investing.
Robinson is also the author of ‘Financial Feminism: A Women’s Guide to Investing for a Sustainable Future’, which was published in February 2021 and looks at how women can use their financial power to invest in a sustainable future and build the kind of world they want to live in.
On the Podcast
The term ‘gender investment gap’ refers to the discrepancy between the amount of money the average woman gets back on her investments over the course of her lifetime, versus the return the average man experiences over his lifetime. Although Robinson recognises that there may be a multitude of reasons for the existence of the gender investment gap, she highlights existing financial gaps (in the form of pay, funding and pricing gaps), a lack of investing confidence and limited investment knowledge as some of the key drivers of this issue.
Robinson also expresses her concerns regarding the fact that the investment industry is not doing a good job of engaging with female investors, with the industry still being very male-driven. As a structural issue discouraging women from participating more in the industry, the majority of financial products and services are not currently being tailored to the needs of women. This must change if the investment gap is to reduce.
The investment gap should be considered a real concern, with women not investing as much as men and instead leaving a lot of their wealth in the form of cash or cash equivalents. Along with missing out on the opportunity to grow their wealth in the long-run, this results in women suffering from a gender pension gap and thus a lower quality of life in their elderly years.
With the gender investment gap becoming an increasingly prominent and pressing issue in recent years, it is important to consider how it has been affected by the Covid-19 crisis. Although there is no concrete data on the matter as of yet, it is well documented that the pandemic has negatively impacted the finances of women more than men, with women facing more redundancies and working longer hours. Consequently, according to Robinson, the Covid-19 crisis has made it more difficult to close the investment gap.
Nowadays, we are seeing an increasing number of investing apps and financial advice services specifically for women. Robinson believes that the introduction of these apps has certainly made it much easier for women to dial into investment decisions and the investment education that needs to happen, but that even more resources can be made available to further encourage women to invest. These include women-only focused investment clubs and investment communities to help women come together and discuss their investment options in a more comfortable environment, and the establishment of webinars and books tailored to the specific wants and needs of women.
