Women and Money

More women are participating in the workforce and empowered in their financial future. Not surprisingly, women are a consumer powerhouse driving the majority of household spending. Yet, there are some real hurdles that limit a better financial position for women, including a significant wage gap and readiness for emerging jobs in the future.

Here are some interesting facts:

Purchasing power: $40 Trillion is the estimated annual purchasing power of women worldwide. In the US, women account for around $2.1 Trillion in spending and drive 70 to 80 percent of all consumer purchasing decisions.
Financial well-being: Nearly half (46 percent) of women globally believe that financially, they are worse off or about the same compared with five years ago due to the rising cost of living, according to a Nielsen survey. In Europe, North America and Latin America, that percentage is even higher at 66%, 61% and 54% respectively. In Asia Pacific, 32% of women think that they are worse off or about the same compared with five years ago.
However COVID-19 is likely to erode this confidence. Consumer confidence fell in the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, and France over the past three months, according to a Morning Consult survey in March 2020.
Labor participation: Women make up almost half of the world’s working-age population of nearly 5 billion people. However, globally, only 55 percent of women (aged 15-64) are engaged in the labor market as opposed to 78 percent of men.
Wage gap: Worldwide, for every $1 earned by a woman, men earn nearly twice as much ($1.86). The average woman’s annual income (purchasing power parity) is $11,500, versus $21,500 for a man. At the more senior levels, while the gap closes, women in similar positions as men (for seniority and skill levels) are still paid less. On average, the wage gap worldwide is at least over 40% (the ratio of the wage of woman to that of a man in a similar position) and income gap is over 50% (the ratio of the total wage and non-wage income of women to that of men).
Future jobs: Women are on average heavily under-represented in emerging roles such as “cloud computing” (only 12% of all professionals are women), “engineering” (15%) and “Data and AI” (26%).
Access to financial resources: There are still 72 countries where women are barred from opening bank accounts or obtaining credit.
Unpaid work: Women spend double the time men do on housework and other unpaid activities in the 29 countries for which data are available. 89 percent of women around the world say they have shared or primary responsibility for daily shopping, household chores and food preparation.