Millions of women believe investing is far harder than it really is, according to new research from etoro, suggesting that the UK’s £574bn gender investment gap is driven in part by perception rather than financial barriers.
A survey of 2,000 UK women found 73% believe they’d need to learn a lot before they could start investing, and 62% find the idea overwhelming. Yet women who already invest tell a different story: 69% say investing is made to seem more complicated than it really is.
To test whether that perception could actually be changed, etoro’s Loud Investing campaign partnered with former Lioness Jill Scott MBE and Dr Ylva Baeckström of King’s Business School. Together they assembled the Loud Investing XI, a team of 11 women including Jill Scott, to take part in the 7-Day Loud Investing Challenge, just 20 minutes of structured learning a day, covering the basics of risk and return through to making a first investment decision. The challenge was then scaled to a further 141 women across the UK, with attitudes measured before and after using an assessment developed by Dr Baeckström.
The shift was significant. The share describing investing as very or extremely complex fell from 50% to 15%. Agreement that investing was “for people like me” rose from 34% to 71%. Those planning to start investing immediately nearly tripled, from 13% to 38%, while comfort investing in assets that could rise or fall in value rose from 35% to 61%.
Dr Baeckström said the barrier for many women isn’t ability but exclusion from the chance to acquire the necessary knowledge, and that women are better described as “risk aware” than “risk averse”, learning about risk and return helped participants feel comfortable accepting some risk to grow their savings.
Jill Scott said most of the group initially thought investing required expertise before you could try it, comparing it to football: you learn and improve by doing. The biggest lesson, she said, was realising participants didn’t need to learn everything in seven days, just that they needed to start.
Dan Moczulski, UK Managing Director at etoro, said the message is simple: start learning, asking questions and engaging. Too many people hold back believing they need to understand everything first, when breaking investing into simple steps shrinks the barrier considerably.
etoro is now opening the 7-Day Loud Investing Challenge nationally to all UK women.
For all the findings, see the complete report attached below. Find out more about the Loud Investing Challenge at
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