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First published August 2007

“The nesting instinct”: women and investment risk in a historical context

Janette Rutterford and Josephine MaltbyView all authors and affiliations
Volume 12, Issue 3
https://doi.org/10.1177/1032373207079035

Abstract

The objective of this article is to place the debate about women's investment behaviour — in particular their attitude to risk — in a historical context. We examine a number of case studies of investments made by English women between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries and compare the results with the findings of recent surveys of women's attitudes to investment. Modern research consistently finds evidence of a gender effect, with women taking less investment risk than men. However, this research is primarily US-focused, restricted to pensions planning and based on questionnaire surveys. Using surveys of women's wills, share registers, and correspondence archives, we also find a gender effect, but one which is significantly reduced once education, knowledge and access, marital status and wealth are taken into account. We argue that such case studies are a valuable way forward for assessing the extent to which women were risk seekers or risk avoiders.

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1. Relative risk aversion is defined as change in portfolio allocation to risky assets as wealth increases, a measure developed by Friend and Blume (1975).
2.
2. Maltby and Rutterford's (2006) findings on spinsters' investment activity are supported by Swan (2005), studying female involvement in a group of Scottish investment trusts, who finds spinsters to account for more than 40 per cent of the women investors.

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Volume 12, Issue 3
Pages: 305 - 327
Article first published: August 2007
Issue published: August 2007

Keywords

  1. investment
  2. risk
  3. women

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Authors

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Janette Rutterford
Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK, j.rutterford@ open.ac.uk
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Josephine Maltby
University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, [email protected]
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