The UK’s gender investment gap is now estimated to be worth £678 billion – a figure so large that it exceeds the annual economic output of countries like Belgium or Sweden. More worrying still, the gap isn’t shrinking – it’s widening. In fact, it has grown over the past two years.

When we talk about the gender wealth gap, the conversation usually centres on pay. And while closing the pay gap is undeniably crucial, there’s another, quieter piece of the puzzle that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: investing.

Investing is one of the most effective ways to build long-term wealth, thanks to the power of compound growth. As one senior investment strategist at a leading asset manager explained, with people living longer, the cost of living continuing to rise and the pensions landscape becoming increasingly complex, investing is no longer optional – it’s a crucial part of building financial security for the future.

So why does the investment gap exist? While it’s often dismissed as a lack of interest among women, the reality is that structural and cultural barriers play a far greater role.

Understanding the barriers

One of the key drivers of the investment gap is risk aversion. Research by Boring Money found that only 20% of women said they were comfortable taking on a lot of investment risk, compared with 44% of men. It’s easy to see how that translates into behaviour. If investing feels risky, leaving your money in a savings account can feel like the safer option.

Except that isn’t always true.

Over the long term, inflation gradually chips away at the value of cash, meaning money that feels “safe” today can actually lose spending power over time. Investing isn’t risk-free, of course, but neither is avoiding it altogether.

Why women may have the edge

The irony is that many of the traits often cited as reasons women invest less may actually put them in a stronger position once they do start investing. Researchers at Warwick Business School analysed the behaviour of 2,800 investors and found that women outperformed men by an average of 1.8 percentage points each year. The reason wasn’t that women had access to better information or made bolder investment decisions. Quite the opposite. They traded less, were less likely to chase speculative opportunities and were more willing to stick with a long-term investment strategy, allowing compound growth to do the heavy lifting.

It challenges the idea that successful investing is about confidence, taking big risks, or trying to time the market. In many cases, patience and consistency are actually what is crucial to build long-term wealth through investing.

How I got started

I certainly didn’t feel like someone who should be investing when I first started looking into it. I didn’t study economics or finance at school or university, so I came to investing with very little knowledge. When I began learning about investing, a lot of education articles assumed I already

knew the basics. Compound interest, diversified portfolios, equities, fixed income – I remember reading those terms and feeling as though everyone else understood a language I hadn’t learnt.

What finally pushed me to start was speaking to friends who had already been investing for a few years. None of them were City professionals, and they hadn’t built complicated portfolios or spent hours researching individual companies. Most had invested in simple, ready-made diversified portfolios and had been contributing regularly over time. Seeing that made investing feel much more normal and much more achievable.

Investing doesn’t have to be complicated

I still think doing your own research is important, but I also think we sometimes overcomplicate what it means to get started. Today, many investment platforms offer low-cost, ready-made portfolios that are designed around different levels of risk, meaning you don’t have to become an expert overnight and more importantly, you don’t need to know everything before you begin.

It’s time to change the conversation

If there’s one thing I’d like to see change, it’s the way we educate people about investing. This isn’t just about encouraging more women to open investment accounts; it’s about helping people understand the cost of not investing too.

We spend a lot of time talking about the risks of the stock market, but not nearly enough time talking about the risks of leaving money sitting idle in cash for decades. Inflation quietly erodes its value year after year, and for anyone investing for goals that are ten, twenty or thirty years away, that’s an important conversation to have.

The more we normalise investing, explain it in plain English and make financial education genuinely accessible, the more confidence people will build.

The evidence already tells us that women are perfectly capable of being excellent long-term investors. Now we need to make sure more women feel that investing is for them.

If this resonates, WomenWise is the community where these conversations happen year-round – not just when it makes headlines. Want to get involved or partner with us? Get in touch here!

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This article was contributed by Lauren Gibbons, WomenWise volunteer.

Lauren is a financial journalist and a WomenWise Volunteer. Having witnessed the lack of female representation in finance, she is dedicated to creating content that helps women build confidence, succeed and thrive in the field.