What is Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander? How gender-specific conceptual frames affect financial participation and decision-making

We conduct a field experiment with elementary school children to go to the roots of the gender gap in financial participation and decision-making. We study the combined effects of two treatments designed to boost the attention span of participants in completing a basic financial task. We find that the use of gender-specific conceptual frames (competitiveness vs. cooperation) in the description of the task: a) raises girls’ interest and thus increases their number of coherent answers; b) makes the transmission of information on the utility of savings more effective in boosting the coherence of girls’ answers; c) does not increase girls’ level of impatience. This evidence supports our underlying hypothesis that the use of more gender-specific conceptual frames in presenting financial information to women may play a role in narrowing the gender gap in financial market participation and decision-making.