Gender Gap in Financial Decisions and Investments

I. INTRODUCTION

Women will in general live longer than men; have shorter work encounters, lower earnings and levels of annuity or survivors' benefits. These factors put women at a higher hazard than men of having financial issues and of moving toward retirement with practically zero savings. To be sure, unmarried, especially separated, women close retirement age have significantly lower wealth levels than wedded couples and unmarried men and the difference is just mostly clarified by lower levels of changeless earnings and work force attachment. There is a blossoming literature documenting low degrees of financial literacy population wide and the connection between literacy and savings behavior. Changing statistic patterns and sorts of financial decisions being made increase the significance of understanding what accounts for the low degrees of financial knowledge and literacy among women and what job financial literacy plays in determining savings behavior. Increasing rates of separation and lower remarriage rates infer higher rates of unmarried women at retirement age than in the past. In addition, moves in annuity plan types from characterized benefit to characterized commitment suggest people are assuming greater liability for their retirement security. In the meantime the developing numbers of financial instruments accessible for financing a home or extricating equity from a current home infer some key decisions are becoming increasingly perplexing. In spite of the fact that there is general agreement in the exact literature that women have lower levels of financial knowledge than men, less is understood about the size of this difference, the factors associated with the difference, and how this converts into behavior.

Thirupathi (2011) has directed a study on "Investment Patterns and Tax Planning of Salaried Class Investors in Vellore District". The focal point of this study is on the individual salaried class investors. Keeping in view the potential savings of the salaried class investors, this study diagrams the calculated foundation with spotlight on investment and tax planning, looks at the profile and consciousness of the salaried class investors, investigations the attitude and fulfillment of the salaried class investors towards investments, assesses the factors persuading the investors for investments and anticipated rate of quantifiable profit, examinations the mindfulness and attitude of investors towards tax planning and offers recommendations for increasing investments in

Malekar et al (2012) in their article entitled "A study of investor behavior on investment roads in Mumbai Fenil" expressed that investor's perception will give an approach to precisely measure how the investors consider the products and services given by the organization. The target of the study is to discover the need of the current and future investors and to study on investor behavior. An example of 100 investors was taken for the study. A large portion of the investors were making moderate decisions that mirroring a survival mode in the business operation. During these troublesome occasions, understanding what investors choose a continuous basis is basic for survival. Therefore, the study is distinguished that individuals like to put resources into stock market when contrasted with some other markets, regardless of whether they face immense losses. Joseph et al (2014) has conveyed "A Study on Preferred Investment Avenues among the People and Factors Considered for Investment". The study has been embraced with the target, to examine the investment selection of individuals in couple of urban communities in Bangalore. The study is based on utilizing a structured questionnaire. The study infers that all the age groups among the respondents give more significance to put resources into bank deposit and insurance. Income level of a respondent is a significant factor which influences investment arrangement of the respondent. Respondents are increasingly mindful about different investment roads like insurance, bank deposits, small savings like mail station savings and so forth. Many individuals are not willing to go out on a limb for their funds, so many like to put resources into bank deposits, insurance, post office saving and so forth., The study recommended to each respondent that, they need to procure a particular knowledge of different sorts of investment openings accessible in the financial market and evaluation of investment for maintaining a strategic distance from loss. Puneet (2014) has completed a study to dissect the mindfulness level and investment behavior of salaried people towards financial products. Every one of those salaried people of Himachal Pradesh was considered as the population for this study. An example of 516 respondents was utilized for the motivation behind this study. Results of the study recommend that respondents are very mindful about traditional and safe financial products whereas mindfulness level of new age financial products among the population is low. Additionally lion's share of the respondents parks their cash in traditional and safe investment roads. Sanchita (2018) has directed a study on "Investment Avenues and Investor's Choice". The article considered the investment roads of values, shared funds, fixed income protections, insurance products demonstrates the increasing investor‘s inclination or sign towards the market connected protections as against the traditional or conventional investment instruments. It was at last spelled that, pattern may proceed sooner rather than later however may not locate a similar reaction with the decay of the positively trending market.

Phull (2014) gathered the information from the review to realize the factors affecting Indian individual investor behavior in stock market. Utilizing uni-variate and multi-variate examination and found five central points that influence the investment behavior of individual investor in stock market to be specific judiciousness and precautions, attitude, conservatism, under certainty, informational asymmetry and financial expansion. At long last he finished up these are the major psychological segments appear to be affecting individual investors exchanging behavior Indian stock market. He examined the factors affecting investment behavior and reasoned that investor's age and gender are the principle factors which choose the hazard taking limit of investors. Gaurav (2010) receives a changed questionnaire to investigate factors impacting Greek investor behavior on the Athens stock trade (ASE). As per their findings, singular base their stock purchase decision on economic criteria joined with other jumper‘s variable. The creators don't depend on a solitary incorporated methodology, however on many classifications factors. There is shade level of co-connection between the factors that behavioral finance theory and past exact proof recognize as the impacting factors for the average equity investor, and behavior of dynamic individual investors in the ASE impact by the general patterns winning at the season of the overview. Bhole and Jitender (2009) investigate investors' perceptions of earnings quality, auditor autonomy, and the helpfulness of inspected financial information. He infers that lower perceptions of earnings quality are associated with more noteworthy dependence on a company's evaluated financial statements and fundamental examination of those statements when making investment decisions. Psychological heuristics and biases can lead singular investors to act in a totally sudden manner and in this manner they wind up observing their investment performing in all respects inadequately in regular case. Fisher and Jordan (2011) find that the sentiment of Wall Street strategists is unrelated to the sentiment of individual investors or that of bulletin author

that sentiment could be helpful for strategic assets designation, and that a negative connection between the sentiments of every one of these three groups and future stock returns exists, and relationship is deliberately huge for Wall Street strategists and individual investors. They inspect the demand for social information by individual investors, and emphasize the value of yearly reports to corporate investors. The results likewise show solid demand for information about the item wellbeing and quality, and about the organization's environmental exercises. Khan (2011) attempts to test the exchanging decisions of investors. Utilizing exchanging records of individual investors, the study tests whether investors' exchanging decisions are impacted by their inclinations for confining of increases and losses. Investors are bound to package offers of losers around the same time than clearance of winners. This result is predictable with the epicurean altering hypothesis, as indicated by which people lean toward incorporating losses and isolating increases. Elective clarifications based on tax-loss selling, edge calls, the number of stocks in the portfolio, the difference in the potential continues from selling winners and losers, relationships among winners and among losers, and postponements in deals request execution don't completely account for the watched behavior.

As indicated by Tannahill, (2012) financial decision making requires the capacities to reason, recover information and perform quantitative tasks with respect to cash. It is the capacity to make informed judgments in regards to the utilization and management of cash and wealth. The individuals who are all the more financially knowledgeable are significantly more prone to have arranged. Financial literacy can effectsly affect financial behavior. Increased financial literacy could enable people to understand their saving circumstances better, spare more, and accomplish higher economic status and progressively economic security. In expressions of Maria (2013), people who went to credit advising programs for a long time were ready to pay off their debt and improve their credit card handling. Financial training is the procedure by which individuals improve their understanding of financial products, services and ideas so they are empowered to settle on informed decisions, stay away from entanglements, realize where to proceed to act to improve their present and long term financial prosperity. Financial instruction projects ought to be encouraged to advance financial mindfulness and encourage individuals to settle on better financial decisions. Cole and Shastry (2018) describes four- long last financial results, for example, cash spared. Customer Bankers Association believes purchaser financial training is significant and is focused on the objective of expanding financial instruction and improving buyers' understanding of the complexities of shopper financial services-whether in mortgages, credit cards, understudy loans, deposit products, or every one of the manners by which buyers cooperate with financial. CBA additionally support financial literacy programs in state funded schools. Financial insight is the gathering of information of financial significance, to understand its impact and elucidations, and foresee its behavior and results. It helps in improving decision-making abilities and lift command over finances. As per Dedrick (2017), financial insight goes beyond the arrangement of financial information and guidance. It is the capacity to know, monitor, and successfully utilize financial resources to upgrade the prosperity and economic security of oneself, one's family, one's matter of fact. We need the attention to realize what state we are in so we know where we are going. Having great financial IQ isn't tied in with saving tons of cash or dumping them into mutual funds. It is building a wealth of assets that will create cash. On Debt Literacy, Lusardi and Tufano (2009) feature the requirement for important and viable financial literacy information. Individuals with low financial literacy are bound to have issues with debt. On Retirement Preparedness, Lusardi and Mitchell (2006) mention that individuals with low financial literacy are less inclined to partake in the stock market, less inclined to pick mutual funds with lower charges, less inclined to aggregate wealth and manage wealth successfully and more averse to get ready for retirement. Absence of planning is pervasive among older workers, as per Lusardi study in 2000 and 2002. These findings demonstrate that many workers come up short on the information essential for making saving decisions and lack of foresight is the primary result of financial illiteracy. Chatterjee, Chowdhury, and Mukherjee, (2010) Traditional multi-criteria decision-making techniques can't give best decision support because they are unequipped for modeling subjective human reasoning procedure. Then again, fluffy logic is broadly perceived as a tool with the capacity to figure utilizing words to model subjective human speculation forms in the investigation of complex systems and decisions. Decision making procedure is a confused phenomenon. Individuals are questionable about

Lamba (2010) emphasized that non finance individuals feel that finance is something entangled and beyond the extent of their understanding. Finance is a necessary piece of everybody's life and financial standards are based on unadulterated and basic good judgment. The capacity to take financially keen decisions is financial management. It is the capacity to understand the effect of each decision on total assets or economic position and to guarantee that every one of the moves ought to be made to strengthen economic position and do nothing that debilitates it.

Bibi and Vikneswaran (2016) endeavors to discover differences in working women and men in their decision to make an investment in Mauritius, with a target to discover whether gender differences exist in investment decision making. The literature review explains on the three factors which add to investment decision making have been picked, to be specific, hazard tolerance, financial literacy and kinds of investment. The philosophy comprised of the planning procedure wherein this research is going to gather data through questionnaires among the working class of Mauritians in the capital city Port Louis, to investigate those data and at last to test the data. The independent examples t-test was picked as the trial of difference to demonstrate the hypotheses of this research. The results acquired uncovered that there is a noteworthy difference between gender and hazard tolerance while there is no huge difference between gender and financial literacy and additionally kinds of investment. The findings of this research were useful in discovering potential causes which created such results. At long last, the confinements were talked about and recommendations were given on the research topic. Bayyurt et al (2015) endeavors to investigate how women and men vary in their individual investment inclinations. Despite the fact that there are a few examinations for the investors in created nations, the subject has been ignored in rising and immature nations. Therefore, this study is the main experimental study investigating the investment behaviors of women and men by concentrating on a rising nation, Turkey. For the reason to discover how investment inclinations of men and women contrast towards six investment tools, to be specific, gold, foreign money, funds, normal stocks, real estates, and time deposits, a discriminant investigation and a strategic relapse were worked out. The results uncovered that while men investors lean toward regular stocks and real estate to contribute women investors are more hazard opposed and contribute finance, time deposit and gold. There is no critical Fonseca et al (2010) has demonstrated that financial illiteracy is across the board among women, and that many women are new to even the most basic economic ideas expected to settle on saving and investment decisions. This gender gap in financial literacy may add to the differential degrees of retirement readiness between women and men. Be that as it may, little is thought about the determinants of the gender gap in financial literacy. Utilizing data from the RAND American Life Panel, we analyzed potential clarifications for the gender gap including the job of marriage and division of financial decision-making among couples. We found that differences in the statistic attributes of women and men did not clarify a significant part of the financial literacy gap, whereas education, income and current and past conjugal status diminished the watched gap by around 25%. Oaxaca disintegration uncovered the extraordinary dominant part of the gender gap in financial literacy isn't clarified by differences in covariates - attributes of men and women - however because of coefficients, or how literacy is created. We didn't discover solid support for specialization in financial decision-making within couples by gender. Rather, we found that decision-making within couples was delicate to the relative education level of life partners for the two women and men. Likewise, Kothari (2012) completed a study among banking employees and expressed that women were investing more into hazard free investment choices, similar to worker fortunate reserve. Gender differences are influenced by an individual's conjugal status. Many examinations have additionally been directed in India, a creating nation where women are for the most part a casualty of the gender gap in their general public and have moderately lower income. In this manner, their investment decision is influenced by the degree of income. In addition, an individual's investment decision many likewise be influenced by his financial consultant and subject to his degree of financial literacy. As such, there have been uncertain results from many investigations with regards to whether financial decisions are an issue of gender. Then again, in a later study by Charness and Gneezy (2017) on this branch of knowledge, stocks and individual businesses were classified as progressively hazardous investments, whereas, authentications of deposits, government bonds and real estate were seen as generally okay and lower return investments. In this manner, it was found that women put resources into stocks and individual businesses less frequently and in low sums than men however they put all the more regularly and in high sums in generally safe, lower return assets, the declarations of deposit and

creators in their study endeavored to distinguish the individual qualities that impact confidence in an investment decision. It was confirm that women had significantly lower confidence in an investment task than men, subsequent to controlling for all other important factors and attributes including the measure of the investment decision itself. Recognition with and present attitude about investing in the stock market, school credit hours in accounting and finance, involvement in assessing basic stocks, the current degree of the stock market, and the investment decision itself (the sum to be invested) were additionally found to be critical. Then again, age, estimation of individual portfolio, long periods of school and long stretches of business experience were not found to be critical qualities.

Besides gender, other socio-statistic qualities, for example, age, income level, education level, conjugal status can be fundamental in anticipating investment inclinations. There is a positive correlation between decision-making and financial literacy. Decision-making among couples, concerning paying bills, investments followed by getting ready with taxes and making short and long term savings plans, is touchy to the relative education level of the couple. Actually, women and men with comparative education levels in respect to their accomplice on average interpretation of a similar number of financial duties are in charge of progressively financial exercises. Thus the main reason for the gender gap in financial literacy boils down to the education level. Additionally, the way that the men and women don't have a solid knowledge in the financial field may be the reason why no gender gap was recognized. It can therefore be recommended that insufficient activity is taken from financial institutions and the government to make individuals mindful of the investment world. Gender equality in financial investment making will play a pivotal role in achieving UN‘s Sustainable Development Goals 2030. Societies who still believe in patriarchy and gender stereotyping can never make progress irrespective of any said sector. Thus financial literacy initiative programs led by financial institutions should aim at reaching women within the household boundaries and should break the glass ceiling whatsoever for inclusive decision making and financial growth.

1. Thirupathi, T. (2011). ―A Study on Investment Patterns and Tax Planning of 2. Malekar, S, Brahmabhatta and Raghu Kumari P. S. (2012). ―A Study of Investor Behavior on Investment Avenues in Mumbai Fenil‖. TRANS Asian Journal of Marketing and Management Research, 1.1: pp. 49–66. 3. Joseph A. L. and Prakash, M. (2014). ―A Study on Preferred Investment Avenues Among the People and Factors Considered for Investment‖. International Journal of Management and Commerce Innovations. 2.1: 120-129(online) 4. Puneet, B. (2014). ―Insights into Awareness Level and Investment Behaviour of Salaried Individuals towards Financial Products‖. International Journal of Engineering, Business and Enterprise Applications, 8.1: pp. 53-57. 5. Sanchita S. and Haldar (2018). ―Investment Avenues and Investors‘ Choice‖, Portfolio Organizer, 9.10: pp. 58-63. 6. Phull, Gurpreet Singh (2014). Foreign Institutional Investors and Capital Market in India, New Century Publications, New Delhi. 7. Aggarwal, Gaurav (2010). ‗A Study of Exchange Rates Movement and Stock Market Volatility‘, International Journal of Business and Management, Vol.5, No.12, pp. 62-73. 8. Bhole, L. and Mhakud Jitender (2009). Financial Institutions and Market: Structure, Growth and Innovations, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited, New Delhi. 9. Fisher, D.E. and Jordan, R.J. (2011). Security and Portfolio Management, Prentice-Hall of India, New Delhi. 10. Khan, M.Y. (2011). Financial Management: Text, Problems and Cases, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited, New Delhi. 11. Tannahill, B. A. (2012). The Role of Financial Literacy in Retirement Decision Making. Journal of Financial Service Professionals. Vol. 66 (2), pp. 32-35. 12. María, J. R. G. (2013). Financial Education and Behavioral Finance: New Insights into

13. Cole, S. & Shastry, G. K. (2018). If You Are So Smart, Why Aren‘t You Rich? The Effects of Education. Financial Literacy and Cognitive Ability on Financial market Participation. HBS Working Paper 09-071. 14. Dedrick, J. (2017). Enhance Your Financial Intelligence. Paradise Publishers Inc. (US). Retrieved from https://www.free-ebooks.net/ebook/Enhance-Your-Financial-intelligence. 15. Lusardi, A. & Tufano, P. (2009). Debt Literacy, Financial Experiences and Over indebtedness. NBER. Working Paper No. 14808. CFS Working Paper No. 2009/08. http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w14808. 16. Lusardi, A. & Mitchell, O. S. (2006). Financial Literacy and Retirement Preparedness: Evidence and Implications for Financial Education. Working Paper No.144. Business Economics. Vol. 42(1), pp. 35–44. 17. Chatterjee, D., Chowdhury, S. & Mukherjee, B. (2010). A Study of the application of Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process in The Ranking of Indian Banks. International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology. Vol. 2(7). (ISSN: 0975-5462. 2511- 2520). 18. Lamba, A. (2010). Romancing the balance sheet. Network18 Publications Pvt. Ltd. (ISBN 10: 9380200129; ISBN 13: 9789380200125). 19. Bibi and Vikneswaran (2016). ―Gender Differences in Investment Decision Making Among the Working Class of Mauritius‖ Vol-2, Issue-9, 2016 20. Nizamettin Bayyurt, Vildan Karışık, Ali Coşkun (2015). ―Gender Differences in Investment Preferences‖ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277313389 21. Raquel Fonseca, Kathleen Mullen, Gema Zamarro, and Julie Zissimopoulos (2010). ―What Explains the Gender Gap in Financial Literacy? The Role of Household Decision-Making‖ https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2010/RAND_WR762.pdf 22. Charness, G.B. and U. Gneezy (2017). ―Strong evidence for gender differences in investment.‖ Department of Economics, 23. Estes, R. and J. Hosseini (2018). ―The gender gap on Wall Street: an empirical analysis of confidence in investment decision making.‖ The Journal of Psychology, 122(6): pp. 577-590. 24. Kothari, H. (2012). Investor‘s behavior towards investment avenues: a study with reference to Indore City. Altius Shodh Journal of Management & Commerce.

Department of Rural Management, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, India