Why Indian women and finance are not a match made in heaven

Some of us saw our mothers work, yes, but more often, we saw them managing the grocery budget with surgical precision, saving up for gold or school fees, stretching every single rupee a little further. When women got together, discussions around money were relegated to tomato prices and the going rate for domestic workers.

So much of women’s relationship with money is shaped by cultural conditioning—subtle, enduring messages that order them to stay out of financial conversations, that make it clear that talking about money is to talk out of place, that it is the man’s job to take care of the ‘big life decisions’ while women look after the home. When you grow up with groceries and gossip being your context for money, how are you suddenly supposed to take control of your finances when you’re thrust into the real world?

Different standards for failure

Gender has nothing to do with investment decision-making, but women have been taught to fear getting it wrong. And in financial matters, getting it wrong feels fatal.

That doesn’t mean men don’t make financial mistakes all the time. But when they fail, society tells them that it’s okay, that these things happen, that they can turn it around. When women fail? They’re told to stay in their lane, take care of their home, that they shouldn’t have tried in the first place.

Somewhere along the way, this constant culture of financial gaslighting has been rebranded as ‘relatable content.’ We giggle at ‘girl math’, a TikTok trend from 2023 used to describe the way girls justify their spending habits, not realising it masks a much deeper discomfort—one we inherited from centuries of women being left out of money decisions, not one we developed.

Women owe it to themselves

If all of this sounds familiar, let me tell you what I (nervously) told those incredible women in 2016: looking away does not do us any favours.

Knowing how money works is empowering irrespective of your gender, but it is crucial for women to have this knowledge. We earn less than our male counterparts. We live longer but have more, often permanent breaks in our careers. We run out of money much quicker than we expect to. And we fool ourselves into thinking that we won’t understand money.

Replace shame with curiosity

The next time you come across a financial term you don’t understand, write it down. Google it. Ask a friend. Ask AI to explain it to you like a 5-year-old. But don’t leave it hanging. Think of it like building your money vocabulary—word by word. You don’t need to know everything. But each concept you understand chips away at the fear.