"This is not only a fun question but it is of great practical value," said Insead Assistant Professor of Finance Lily Fang, who hosted a Women and Money forum at Insead.
Some studies suggest that women are better investors than men. Dig a little deeper and the picture isn't so clear.
What is clear is that too few women take an active role in investing their savings. Since women on average live longer and have lower lifetime income than men, it's important that they learn more about investing, said Fang.
In a large number of academic studies of investment gains, men and women actually come out about the same on a net basis. Women do better in the end because they trade less frequently, so they do not run up expensive trading costs.
"[Men] take higher risks and higher risk is rewarded with higher returns, but after you take out the transaction costs… men are slightly worse than women," she said.
In fact, Fang said both men and women tend to under-perform the major market indexes when they trade as individuals. "The more you trade, the more you loose out against a passive index, so compared to men, women might lose out a little less," she said. Surprisingly, men trade about 50 per cent more than women.
The statistics are the same if you compare women and men who are professional traders, but the sample size of women professional traders is so small that Fang is reluctant to draw conclusions.
She's much more confident about the obvious conclusion: "The evidence should give women the confidence that they are perfectly capable of taking advantage of their financial well-being and we need to get that message out there so that people can start doing the planning and then it's a matter of educating yourself," said Fang.
Long-term financial planning is a particularly important issue for women, said Fang, because people are living longer and women have longer life expectancy than men, often by 10 years or more, and in old age women tend to be afflicted with long-term illnesses such as osteoporosis and arthritis.
"If you don't have a financial plan in place that you started thinking ahead of time, once you get [older], a lot of people are quite shocked" by their financial status, she said.
Women should know that it's never too early to start planning. Fang said women should start saving and investing when they land their first job.
Fang said it is important for the family, both the man and the woman, to come up with a financial plan together and to invest together. Research evidence shows that as a partnership, men and women together make better decisions. Now it is up to women to take greater control.
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