Financial empowerment: Empowering women through financial education
Gender equality in corporate settings has been a trending topic of discussion. While there has been progress, there is much room for improvement. Workplace environments must collaborate and actively participate to bring equality and empower women around them and the world.
Financial empowerment is one such skill that should be promoted in women today. Our global economic structures are constantly in motion. Keeping track of and comprehending the scale of the impact of these changes can be challenging. Financial literacy can help women be informed and aid them in making financially healthy decisions. In doing so, they can secure a stable financial future even during crises such as job loss.
This blog will address the issue and provide tips for implementing financial literacy sessions for women in the workplace.
Understanding the importance of Financial Literacy for women
Navigating the landscape of financial literacy can be challenging for a woman. While they have made marvellous achievements and broken several gendered barriers, many neglect to take charge of their finances. This can be attributed to the lack of supporting infrastructure, outdated societal gender norms, access to resources, and of course, insufficient financial literacy.
As the economy grows more fluid, simply saving 20% of earnings does not financially secure one’s future. One must understand inflation rates, identify reasonable rates of interest, and learn where to secure and invest money to ensure a secure future. Stock market knowledge, banking operations, and geopolitics take up the biggest chunk of this literacy. Enlightening women about these can provide opportunities for them to multiply their savings, rather than opt for the minimum interest rates returned to their savings.
Navigating workplace benefits for female empowerment
Creating a financially literate workplace for women requires significant introspection. Appropriately leveraging work benefits companies offer is one way many ensure their financial security. One must discuss and explore how workplace benefits can be better utilized to promote financial wellbeing for women in the workforce. Let us take a look at some of them:
Reading through healthcare packages: Companies offer a variety of healthcare packages to their employees. One can choose from these packages to the one that best suits their needs. Making your female employees aware of the variety of benefits of each healthcare package can facilitate their decision-making process. Delving into the details of each package can ensure they have access to physical and mental healthcare.
Retirement benefits: One must look into retirement benefits their company offers to ensure a financially healthy future. Women must attempt to strategically utilize their retirement benefits to plan for their life after retirement. Gathering knowledge on investment options can even ensure they implement strategies that are tailored to their tolerance for risks and are aimed at their financial goals.
Workshops and seminars: Many companies offer workshops, seminars, and sessions to discuss various financial strategies one can implement to secure their future financially. Encouraging women to actively seek out and participate in these seminars can aid their journey of learning about financial wellness. They can utilize this knowledge and information to make financially sound decisions. Hence, they must leverage these workplace benefits to ensure financial success.
Empowering women through investment strategies
The global economy now heavily relies on stock markets. One can invest in stocks to yield greater returns than their banks can provide them. However, one must be educated about the stock market to be able to identify promising stocks and invest at the right time. This requires significant information on how the stock market works. Hence, conducting workshops and encouraging female employees to research investment opportunities can financially empower women. Here are some investment strategies that one can discuss:
Buy and hold: A classic strategy in the book is to buy stocks and then hold onto them. This is a long-term investment strategy that yields a decent percentage of returns in 3 to 5 years, if not more. This strategy relies on the business’s performance over the years. In this strategy, one does not need to spend time looking at the stock market and instead spend time doing things one enjoys. One may have to endure extremely steep falls but avoid the temptation to sell at a loss to successfully execute the strategy.
Looking at index funds: Purchasing index funds based on attractive stock indexes like the Nasdaq Composite can help you cover a large diversity of stocks. Since these stock indexes are a collection of relatively well-performing stocks, purchasing these index funds will itself be a diverse collection of stocks on the market. This can result in great results especially when implementing both buy and hold strategies with this.
Dollar-Cost Averaging: This strategy is when one invests in regular intervals. This could be in intervals of weeks, months, or even years. Many professionals set aside a portion of their salaries to invest in stocks to accumulate capital and yield returns over the capital for years. By implementing this strategy you obtain an average invested price of your stocks ensuring there is a return when you choose to pull it out.
Overcoming gender-specific financial challenges
There are numerous gender-specific challenges women are forced to face. This can hinder them from financially securing themselves for their future. Keeping these challenges in mind, one must learn to secure themselves and overcome these obstacles. Let us take a look at what these challenges may be:
Gender pay gap: Often women are paid less than their male counterparts for the same roles. This can be detrimental to women and their fiscal health. Advocating for pay transparency and supporting women to take proactive measures to demand for equal pay can help overcome this hurdle.
Personal responsibilities: Women are often forced to take upon certain restricting household responsibilities. Redundant societal norms pressure them into these roles, forcing them to abandon their careers or take part-time jobs instead. Offering work hours and place flexibility is an organizational change that can support women in these challenges. This way they can carry out these responsibilities and work on their career simultaneously.
These challenges require both individual and organizational change to take place to rightly address and tackle them. The changes must be on the institutional and infrastructural level to overcome these challenges women have to face to this day.
Conclusion
Financial empowerment is extremely important especially when it comes to empowering women. They face gender-specific struggles like societal norms, and infrastructural shortcomings, and have to put in extra effort to reach the same level as their male counterparts would. Promoting financial empowerment can be done through encouraging financial literacy to secure their financial wellbeing future. This makes it important as it can help women reach their full potential. This will alleviate otherwise unnecessary stress and anxiety for their future.
