‘THE LANGUAGE AND VISUAL ASPECTS OF FINANCE ARE MALE’

“Historically, investments and finance were professions for men; women were seen as engaging with money just for household and day-to-day stuff,” says Dimitrios Tsivrikos, a psychologist at University College London. “Sadly, in the 21st century that stereotype is still ingrained.”

He says until women are better represented in industries such as finance, those stereotypes are unlikely to change. But what can we do before that shift takes place?

“Generally, the more contact we have with something, the less we are afraid of it,” he says. “The more women are in contact with finance, even with things such as mortgages, or with shares and investing, the more they will feel empowered to actually make those decisions.”

Many financial companies are also guilty of perpetuating a male focus, Mr Tsivrikos adds. “The language and visual aspects of investing are still very male-dominated – even things such as bank notes, which have more images of men on them. The more we have female figures on money and as visual components in finance, the more they will be engaged.

“At the moment there is a lot of celebrating feminism and talking about women’s rights in a broad way. This is problematic: we need to move away from broad-brush statements on equality and address the key issues that we want to fix.”