How to get more women interested in investing

Rather than treating investing as a hobby the way many men do, women tend to focus on long-term goals. That’s something the finance industry should bear in mind if it wants more women to buy its products.

I am asked on Twitter (follow me on @MerrynSW) by the editors of what looks like it will be a great new magazine (Libertine) what I think about this Wall Street Journal article on female investors.

The basic premise is that female investors aren't the same as male investors. Investing isn't a hobby for them, it is a way to achieve a goal. Therefore if the industry wants to capture them as effectively as it does men, it needs to advertise a "long term goal orientated approach".

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.