Gender wealth gap widest in India among APAC countries, shows study

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Gender divide in India seems to have translated into the widest gap in wealth among Asia-Pacific region. A gender wealth gap of 64 percent in India is largely due to limited leadership roles for women and the higher burden of caregiving responsibilities, a study has revealed.

South Korea tops the league of 12 markets with the gap narrowing down to 90 percent score, it showed.

According to the findings of the 2022 WTW Global Gender Wealth Equity, only 3 percent of women in the workforce occupy senior positions in India.

“Women also tend to assume childcare responsibilities at a young age for the region, resulting in financial impacts from which women have limited capacity to recover. Compounding this is that long-term financial decisions generally rest with men and financial literacy for working women tends to be lower,” stated the report.

The study shows that overall, the gender wealth gap at retirement increases with seniority. At the global level, women in senior expert and leadership roles were found to have less than two-thirds or just 62 percent of the accumulated wealth of their male counterparts at the time of retirement. A substantial gap of 69 percent was found at the mid-level professional and technical roles, but it narrowed considerably to 89 per cent for frontline operational roles.

According to the report, a total of six markets included in the analysis have a higher wealth index at retirement for women compared to the global average, and among them are China at 78 percent), Japan at 82 percent, Philippines at 79 percent and Singapore at 79 percent.