From Director’s Desk | Anirudh Dar
Some of you may find the headline of my weekly blog confusing as to why I’d pick a topic featured on one gender only, especially when finance and investments is truly for everyone. While this is entirely true, but let’s understand a woman’s needs and her journey through her personal and professional life and reference that against men.
At the start of the professional career of a male, the journey is usually projected to be an uninterrupted one – all the way until he retires. Now let’sunderstand the same for women. Start a career. Get married. Start a family and eventually raise the children. Most of these important milestones expect them to take short, medium - or long-term breaks from their careers, hence hampering their financial independence. When they do return, they are behind in their careers and hence possibly not on par with remuneration that those of their male counterparts.
Given different career contours, it may not be an innocuous conclusion that there is a financial disparity in their individual wealth’s as well. Given this reality, it is imperative that women understand their individual finances and are prepared for it from any eventuality. But while their professional journeys may be different for the reasons elaborated above, there are other elephants in the room as to why women sometimes lag when it comes to planning for their finances. One, the peer group and social pressures may not enable women to hear about or participate in investment-related discussions. Two, based on the role models women see, they tend to believe that money management is the domain of men. Three, women may have a late start in investments or when they are vulnerable. For instance, the responsibility may be thrust on them when their spouse is unwell or there is a crisis. And finally, there may also be stereotypes at play which may lead to women being given ultra-conservative advice. As a result, they may stick to low-risk instruments that give low-returns, even if they had the ability to take risks early in your career.
Let us understand that making money or taking independent financial decisions is not the domain of one particular gender and everyone should have an equal opportunity to participate in and take informed and knowledgeable decisions for themselves. At Plutus, we run curated programs where we have embarked on this extremely necessary initiative to empower women irrespective of age, demographic or financial stature and help them become independent financially and we hope to have you come along on this journey with us sometime.