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How asset managers can support female investment trends

4/7/2025

From the margins to the mainstream.

Maria Milina

Research Analyst

Michael Lewis

Head of Research, ESG

IN A NUTSHELL

The last century has witnessed increasing numbers of women gaining the vote, entering universities, joining the labor market, narrowing the pay gap with men and being able to own their own bank account and home. Yet many women globally are still confronted with barriers.
In wealth management, women investors are becoming a major force. This is being fueled by a wealth boom as the percentage of women millionaires and billionaires worldwide hit record levels. It is estimated that if women invested at the same rate as men, there would be an extra US$3.22 trillion of assets under management from private individuals.
Women not only have the potential to invest more, but their investments also tend to generate higher returns compared to men. This can be explained by less frequent trading, staying invested during market downturns, using stop-loss orders and following the advice of their advisor more closely than men . Women are also more likely to invest with social and environmental factors in mind.
It is reasonable to design investment products that are focused on women, but even more women would benefit from a personalized approach that is tailored to their financial objectives and personal goals, such as funding their retirement or care responsibilities. Women may also benefit from education on investing and wealth management that resonate with a female audience.
One obvious area of change is the low level of female financial advisors since more than two thirds of women prefer to speak to a female financial adviser. In many countries, including the U.S., Germany and the UK, no more than 20% of financial advisers are women.
Digital financial services are also contributing to a marked increase in women's access to financial services. Although men still dominate based on the total number of users, women appear to be catching up, as women have been signing up to investment platforms at faster rates than men.
In a world where it may take more than 100 years to close the financial gender gap, more action is required to avoid simply relying on the growth in women investing as the only way to increase their financial wealth and bridge gender inequalities.

Introduction

Following the publication of DWS’s Female Finance paper^[1] at the end of last year, in this paper we dig deeper. Over the next four sections, we first show how the inclusion of women into society is a relatively new phenomenon and how this has affected the financial well-being of women. The second section summarizes research on the investment behavior of women. The third section discusses the importance of women’s prosperity for the global economy and opportunities that female wealth creates. And finally, we provide proposals for better serving women investors and closing the gender investment gap.

1 / A long road to independence and wealth

1.1 Women and education

The inclusion of women into the academic, political, economic, financial, and even sporting arenas of the world has been a relatively recent phenomenon. Take academia, access to higher educational facilities for women only began to emerge from the 1850s. This included the founding of Queen’s College in London in 1860, and the entry for women to the universities of Cambridge and Oxford in 1869 and 1920 respectively. However, for other academic institutions such as Princeton and Yale such progress had to wait until 1969.

Today, girls are outperforming boys from early education to university in many countries.^[2] At college level, women in the United States now account for almost 60% of all college students. ^[3] In the European Union, 42% of the population aged between 25 and 34 years old have tertiary education but when it comes to gender, 48% of European women have benefited from a tertiary education compared to 37% for men. ^[4] This has led to a radical transformation of the composition of universities over the last 60 years.

1.2 Women and suffrage

The first countries in the world to permit women to vote occurred little more than 100 years ago in New Zealand (1893), Australia (1902) and Finland (1906) with Canada, Germany, and the United States following more than a decade later. However, these were the outliers as it took another 40 years for countries such as France, Italy, and Japan to extend the vote to women and even later in Switzerland (1971) and Portugal (1976). Today, around 194 countries across all continents have granted the right for women to vote, Figure 1.

This has been followed by an increase in female representation in national parliaments. At a global level, the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments rose to 27% last year,^[5] compared to 11% in 1995. However, this masks a significant divergence with women in Finland, Norway and Sweden holding 46% of seats of their national parliaments compared to less than 20% in Japan, India, and Brazil. ^[6]Female heads of government or central bank governors are also still a rare breed. Currently, only 13% of the world’s political leaders^[7] and 16% of the world’s 185 central bank governors are women.^[8]

How asset managers can support female investment trends

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DWS CIO View Special (November 2023).”Female finance: the benefits of diversity”

BBC (January 2024). Cambridge study finds girls outperform boys at school

U.S. Department of Education (Latest data 2022). National Centre for Education Statistics

Eurostat (May 2023) More women than men held tertiary degrees in 2022

World Bank data portal https://genderdata.worldbank.org/en/indicator/sg-gen-parl-zs

UN Women. Facts and figures: women’s leadership and political participation

Council on Foreign Relations (August 2024). Women’s power index

OMFIF (August 2024). Gender balance index 2024

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as of 09/23/24; 102771_1.4 (09/2024) (10/2025)

How asset managers can support female investment trends

IN A NUTSHELL

Introduction

1 / A long road to independence and wealth

Important information – For EMEA, APAC & LATAM

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