A potential two thirds, 61 per cent, of women have said they will not be investing into pensions, ISAs or other investment products this tax year.

According to new data from Crowdstacker, a high volume of women are not planning to put any money aside into pensions or other investments, despite the pay gap being its lowest since records began in 1997.

The data showed that 43 per cent of women interviewed had no plans to invest in savings products this tax year and an additional 18 per cent of women weren’t sure if they would make any investments at all this year.

Crowdstacker found, from previous research, that reasons for this lack of investment may be due to a preference to stick to cash accounts and ISAs, which are easy to understand (34per cent), not being aware of the different types of investment available (18 per cent) and not feeling confident enough to pick the best investments (14 per cent).

The platform’s most recent data also signalled that of those women who do plan to make some investments this tax year, 54 per cent are expecting to be investing £2500 or less. In comparison, 44 per cent of their male counterparts said they would be investing at least double this.

Comparing men and women’s’ investments, 17 per cent of men versus 11 per cent of women are expecting to save into a workplace pension this year.

In contrast, it was noted that equal numbers, 59 per cent of men and 60 per cent of women said it was important that they had transparency about how their money was invested.

Crowdstacker CEO Karteek Patel “This perhaps demonstrates that women are equally interested, considered and engaged as men when they do make investment choices.”

Patel added: “There is still a significant pay gap between men and women of about 9.4%. However, although this has been decreasing steadily over recent years it is still not translating into women increasing their investing.

“There are several reasons we believe this might be happening. For example, some women may generally have a lower risk tolerance. Perhaps some have to shoulder a higher share of the burden than men for living expenses meaning they have less spare cash to invest. And from our previous research we can see clearly that some women feel less confident about investing.

“What is clear from the study is that with social factors such as increasing life expectancy and rising costs of old age care, it is important that everyone engages with saving and investing to ensure they are in the best position possible to meet the costs of retirement.”

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