International Women’s Day: championing financial empowerment

International Women’s Day is an opportunity to empower women, their families, their friends, and colleagues, to speak up, ask questions and seek answers on the topics that matter to them.

This International Women’s Day prompts us to reflect on the strides made in empowering and inspiring women in various realms such as education, career advancement, and leadership. While celebrating progress, it's crucial to recognise the ongoing need to address the unique challenges women encounter. One of which is financial empowerment, which we can see through clear financial gaps such as the gender pension gap, the gender investment gap and the gender protection gap.

In this blog, we explore the gender gap within each of these areas; what our research has found to be the driver of these gaps; and what can be done to drive positive change.

The gender pension gap

Last year, Scottish Widows launched our 20^th Women in Retirement Report (PDF, 4.3 MB) which reported a significant 30% gender gap in retirement savings between women and men. Alongside this staggering statistic, 42% of women risk facing poverty in retirement, compared to 35% of men.

We know the primary drivers of the gender pension gap continue to be:

• The gender pay gap
• Women working fewer hours across their working life due to caring responsibilities, for example, which can also contribute to women not receiving the full state pension 
• Women generally saving less into their pensions and other investments
• And pension assets often not being split or taken into consideration during a divorce.

Recognising these key drivers for the gap, and raising awareness of the issues, will hopefully drive change and encourage action.

Try our Beat the Gap tool to see how the gender pension gap could potentially emerge across your working life, as well as some helpful tips based on your answers that could help boost your pension savings and reduce the gender pension gap.

The gender investment gap

There is also a gap identified between women and men in relation to investing, beyond pensions. For example, investing in stocks and shares, property, government bonds and other investments.

Our most recent Women in Retirement Report (PDF, 4.3 MB) highlighted that only 38% of women invest outside of pensions, compared to 55% of men.

This gap is particularly big for young women with only 34% of women aged 18-24 saying they invest, compared to 64% of men. This is important to recognise as investing when you’re young, can be a way for women to offset the impact of potential career breaks on their pension pots.

Confidence and a lack of understanding have been identified as key drivers of these gaps, and so more needs to be done to help empower women to invest. This could be done by providing more educational content and reassurance, alongside having access to easy-to-understand investment options.

Our Investing Basics lessons are a great place to start to learn more about investing.

The gender protection gap

We also see a stark difference in the level of protection policies women have in comparison to men.

Research conducted by YouGov on behalf of Halifax in January 2025, found that only 34% of women have protection in place, compared to 42% of men.

With factors such as age and relationship status having a further negative impact on this reality. For example, 60% of women under 50 have no protection in place, compared to 40% of men, and 65% of single mums have no cover.

The research found that a lack of understanding of the products, set-up process and benefits were the key drivers for the lack of protection amongst women.

For a lot of women who do have protection in place, key life events such as having a baby, getting married, or suffering a serious illness, were what encouraged them to take out some sort of protection policy.

It’s therefore apparent here that education again plays a vital role in closing the gender protection gap, and there’s more we need to do to raise awareness and make protection less complex and more accessible than ever before.

Visit our Protecting your Future lessons to find out more about the different types of protection policies available and the benefits these may have for you.

What can you do to drive change? 

We’re on a mission to empower everyone to take responsibility for securing their financial freedom. We have an opportunity to share our knowledge, the insight we get through our research and the resources we have available help our customers, family, and friends to understand the impact of their choices.

This International Women’s Day, we encourage you to check your pension, review your investments and insurance policies, and identify possible gaps and where you could afford to make positive changes to improve your financial position and security.

We know that a lack of knowledge is a primary blocker for many individuals, so we encourage you to use the resources across Be Money Well to learn more about different areas of your finances. Simply having a conversation with friends and family can also be beneficial, but we understand this can often feel uncomfortable and it’s hard to know where to start. Our Talking about Money page has lots of helpful tips to help you to start these conversations.