Nikita Jaiswal and Tanishka Kacru
Financial literacy refers to the necessary knowledge of various aspects of finance to empower an individual’s decision-making skills related to personal financial goals and objectives. And this knowledge is missing in the large group of young demographic in India. Financial Literacy is already low, and if we look into it from a gender point of view, the percentage bar goes further down for women.
Financial behaviour is the management of personal finances, including savings and investments, expenditures, budget, etc., that requires informed decision-making skills. UNICEF outlines the 16 basic life skills for youth, and decision-making is one of them. With time, there has been a paradigm shift in gender roles concerning different professions and sectors, with women taking the lead in various professional fields. However, money management and financial independence are not vested in women’s hands in many cases. There is a need to identify financial behaviour as one of the essential basic life skills.
Financial literacy is impacted deeply by the significant gender-based disparities in Indian society. The findings highlight a considerable scope of intervention toward improving Financial literacy that has a great potential to shape financial behaviour and make a significant move toward diluting the difference between finance and gender.
This project aims to instigate a conversation about this form of gender disparity by studying, understanding, and analyzing the plausible factors, existing or upcoming, at a system level. Adopting a reflective-gamified design to develop a tool for self-reflection that can impact the financial behavior of young urban women is one of the propositions of this project that has been detailed for testing among a focus group through a participatory approach.
