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According to a study from Finder, of the number of investors in Mexico – which does not exceed 1% of the national population –11% are women and 14% are men.
This difference is partly explained by the gender gap that impacts women’s wages. They earn 14% less than men when performing the same job, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The OECD also mentions that almost 60% of working-age women in Mexico have informal jobs, low social protection, high insecurity, and low pay.
In an interview with Contxto, Mario Valle Reyes, founder and CEO of Altered Ventures and the Investor Camp, explains that the national aversion to investing is due to a cultural fear. “Many people believe that the stock market is full of people with questionable ethics,” he says.
“Therefore, it is important to make decisions and not depend on anyone else. You must be the person who manages your own investments.”
In the case of women, who in Mexico tend to be the least paid for doing housework, learning how to invest can help them get more additional income.
Additionally, several studies claim that women tend to be better stock investors. For example, the Fidelity Investments’ 2021 Women and Investing Study mentions that investors outperformed men by 0.4% in terms of positive returns in annual performance analysis for 9 years.
However, Valle Reyes assures, “not all of them believe it.”
More female investors
With these figures in mind, Valle Reyes created Investor Camp, an education and training initiative for beginning investors in the stock market. It partners with the Mexican Institutional Stock Exchange (BIVA) and Investor Camp, and has been offering investment workshops exclusively for women for a while.
Investor Camp mirrors what happens nationwide in terms of investors, as less than 20% of its participants are women.
However, the initiative is seeking to encourage more female participation. Diana Delfín is a great example of female investors. After being diagnosed with progressive joint damage and seeking a remote job, she entered the world of investing. Now, in addition to having a steady job, she has extra income thanks to the stock market, and after a year of investing her earnings have increased by 37%.
More and more initiatives like Investor Camp, as well as brokers and financial institutions that make investing easier, are quickly spreading through Mexico and Latin America.
Such is the case of Trii, the Colombian fintech that recently launched a service so its users can invest in global companies.
Valle Reyes affirms that the stock market has proven to be an tool that, in the long term, has produced results in order to create wealth, protect assets, and supplement income in the short and medium term, even for retirement. There should be no reason why women shouldn’t learn to use it.
You may also be interested in: Trii now allows Colombians to trade global shares on its app
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