How to Close the Investing Confidence Gap for Women

In collaboration with, Emma Layton, Financial Adviser at Salmon Financial Planning, a Partner practice of St. James’s Place

Only 26% of women in the UK invest — compared to 50% of men. That gap is striking. And if you’re wondering how to close the investing confidence gap for women, the answer isn’t complicated financial theory. It’s simpler than that.

Start small. Start now.

Here’s the thing: investing often gets filed away as something to think about later — after the kids, after the promotion, after you “really understand it.” But waiting has a real cost. Inflation quietly chips away at cash savings sitting in a bank account, and every year spent on the sidelines is a year of compounding growth that’s gone for good.

So why aren’t more women investing?

Around 69% of women say they don’t feel confident making investment decisions. Only 31% feel comfortable with it, versus 44% of men. The top reason? Twenty-seven percent of women say they simply don’t feel knowledgeable enough. Others cite fear of loss, or the belief that investing is too complex — something reserved for people in suits staring at Bloomberg terminals.

That perception is wrong. And outdated.

Investing doesn’t mean picking individual stocks or trying to time markets. It means putting money into diversified funds — a basket of assets across different sectors and regions — and then leaving it alone to grow. Boring, steady, and historically effective. The complexity people imagine doesn’t have to exist.

What’s actually interesting: women who do invest tend to outperform men. Studies consistently show female investors take a more disciplined, long-term approach — less reactive, less prone to panic-selling when markets dip. In other words, the habits that make someone hesitant to start investing in the first place (caution, patience, wanting to understand before acting) turn out to be exactly the traits that produce better returns.

Worth sitting with that for a moment.

Understanding risk is a big part of building confidence here. Risk appetite varies — it depends on your age, your financial goals, how you’d feel watching your portfolio drop 15% in a bad month. Some people prefer steadier, lower-volatility options. Others are comfortable with more fluctuation in exchange for higher potential returns over time. Neither is wrong. The point is knowing where you sit and building a strategy around that — not someone else’s comfort level.

Investing also isn’t a replacement for savings. Cash savings offer security and liquidity; investments offer growth. Together, they do something neither can alone: build genuine long-term financial resilience.

The practical path forward? A few things actually move the needle.

Talk to a financial adviser. A good one will spend time on your specific goals — whether that’s retirement, estate planning, building an emergency fund with room to grow — and map out a realistic route. Start with amounts that feel manageable. Watch what happens. As familiarity builds, so does confidence; that’s not motivational fluff, it’s how learning works.

Projections suggest women will hold a growing share of UK wealth in the coming decades, with their role in financial decision-making expanding significantly. The cost of not investing is real—not just in missed returns, but in missed independence.

The sooner the journey starts, the more time it has to matter.