From Director’s Desk | Anirudh Dar

Women play many different roles in our lives, but rarely do we see them in the role of a core financial decision maker within a family. Hence the topic of my blog this week feels like a bit of an oxymoron.

Despite our rapid economic growth, as of 2018, only 23% of all women aged 15 and above were part of any formal workforce in India. Men, on the other hand were at 79%. A lower participation in the formal workforce only suggests that most of them are homemakers. And while we are talking about the formal workforce, in Corporate India, in a survey of India’s 158 largest companies it was found that only 15% women hold board seats and only 6% of board chairs are women. It is the same when we look at the gender pay gap. Women earn 65% of what their male colleagues earn for performing the same work. The World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report this year ranks India at 149th position out of 153 countries on economic participation and opportunity for women. In this context then, how real is the problem of financial ‘independence’ of women in India? Or is it, financial ‘dependence’?

In all my experience over the years of being a financial advisor, I have had the opportunity to meet with countless individuals and families who wanted me to manage their investment portfolios and as a best-case estimate, for every 20 clients I managed, I had only 2 women clients who wanted to take their own independent investment decisions – despite being married. Each time we have held employee financial wellness sessions in corporates, we have had abysmal female participation and where we had female participation, they ended up asking no questions. And as for the few who did, when we went back to them later, they often said that they would ask their husbands before taking a financial decision.

Maybe this is a societal expectation in India – that women are responsible for taking care of the house and the children and elderly parents while the patriarchal men take care of the finances. When we can trust women with children and our homes, why do we not make them an equal decision maker when it comes to finances.

After all, we are only in the 21st century!