While women have come a long way, they tend to invest significantly less than their male counterparts. According to an Ellevest survey, women are roughly half as likely to invest as men are.
Sallie Krawcheck, CEO, Ellevest, joined TheStreet to break down some of the main barriers women face when it comes to investing, as well as what Ellevest is doing to help bridge that gap.
Full Video Transcript Below:
SARA SILVERSTEIN: Can you tell us what the mission of Ellevest is and why you started it over a decade ago?
SALLIE KRAWCHECK: The mission is pretty straightforward. It's to get more money in the hands of women because we at Ellevest love to say we know of nothing bad that happens when women have more money. We identified that a key determinant, a key driver of the gender wealth gap, which has been getting worse over time, and in which women own and have $0.30 to a white man's dollar, a key driver of it has been that women don't invest as much as men do, that women don't feel like they've got a financial plan in place as much as men do. And so we built the first investing investech and wealth management company that centers women. We are funded by, founded by, built by, built for investing in and investing with women with a goal to help them build wealth.
SARA SILVERSTEIN: And women having fewer financial assets as a, because they invest less as opposed to just having less money. It's really interesting. What causes like what is the barrier for women to be investing as much as men are?
SALLIE KRAWCHECK: Yeah well, so first, women don't earn as much as men do, though. You don't really build wealth from your salary, but it does give you that flow of money into which with which to begin to invest. And then, you know, I think the industry would say, well, the reason they don't invest as much is because they're risk averse and they probably aren't as comfortable with it and they probably need more financial education. And really, they wouldn't say this, but it's these things are wrong with women and they just need to fix those things and begin to invest. And Ellevest and we were really the first that said, well, wait a second. Maybe that's one possible explanation. But another is that we really never built a company, an investing company in wealth management company that really centers them, that has things like, as we do at Ellevest and investing algorithm that understands that women and puts into the calculation that women earn less, take more career breaks, salaries peak sooner, and we tend to die later.
So there is a different way of investing that's needed. One that takes into account that women really do want to invest for impact. They don't want to give up financial return, but they want to have an impact. And you know, as well as the thousands of other little differences that gender can drive, which weren't making women as comfortable with the you know, not a lot of women wanted to trade Bitcoin. Some women did. But that was a more of sort of a male dominated investing fad as opposed to women looking for more of the good old diversified investment portfolios.
