For more than a decade, conversations about women and wealth have circled the same explanations: women are less financially confident, more risk-averse, and less financially literate.
Drawing on psychological research, It’s Not About Confidence explains why this narrative falls short – and why focusing on individual traits obscures the systemic, social and situational conditions that shape women’s long-term financial outcomes.
Written by Emily Shipp, a behavioural researcher on the psychology of futures thinking and long-term financial decision-making, the report shows how structural features of financial systems interact with lived experience – including scarcity, mental load, and future self-connection – to shape financial outcomes over time. Shipp's report is pioneering as it shifts the discourse from individual to systemic influences, using the innovative 'Windows of Possibility' framework.
Produced for the Edinburgh Futures Institute Compassion in Financial Services Hub, the report makes specific recommendations for financial services, advisers and policy makers to address the widening gender pensions gap.
The shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pensions, alongside longer working lives and less linear careers, has placed greater responsibility on individuals to plan for their futures.
This report argues that addressing the gender pensions gap and planning meaningfully for the future requires a holistic account of how structural and psychological factors interact. This is a call for financial services, advisers and policymakers to better understand the contexts in which decisions are made – and to design systems that work with, rather than against, human experience.
The findings have direct relevance for:
This report is the start of a broader mission to engage a wide range of voices and experiences in discussions about financial services. The Compassion in Financial Services Hub plans to explore how intersecting social categories such as race, class, disability, and sexuality create unique financial barriers for women.
The Compassion in Financial Services Hub is dedicated to fostering a more meaningful and diverse discourse on women and financial well-being. We believe that a truly robust conversation requires hearing from a range of diverse perspectives, and we are proud to support the launch of this new report as the first of many important contributions to this vital topic.
As a founding partner of the Compassion in Financial Services Hub, Evelyn Partners is aligned with our mission to build a more compassionate, inclusive financial system. Their commitment to placing the power of good advice into more hands supports our shared goal of closing the gender wealth advice gap.
