Women, Finance, and The Confidence Gap | Fidelity

Watch this video of Fidelity’s Kathy Murphy’s “Empowering Conversations” keynote speech in which she discusses the confidence gap concerning women and investing. To see more videos from Fidelity Investments, subscribe to: https://www.youtube.com/fidelityinvestments Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fidelityinvestments Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/fidelity Google+: https://plus.google.com/+fidelity LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fidelity-investments ________________________________________________________________ What I actually want to do is start with the story of a little girl named Piper. And one day her mom had to take her to work and so she packed up some dolls and a couple coloring books, brought her into work, she thought she’d put her in a cubicle, keep her busy while Karen got to work. Her mom’s name is Karen. And Piper got to work and pretty quickly sized up this cubicle thing and said ‘I’m not sitting in a cubicle.’ And she never touched the doll, never touched the coloring book; she wanted to know what it took to get an office, and preferably a window office. And before her mother knew what was happening, she was going around the office interviewing other people to understand exactly what it took to get promoted at Fidelity. And it’s a real eye opener in terms of what young girls—little girls—think about their future. They’re fearless; they have a lot of confidence. They think boys and girls are equal and equally capable and that’s great. And I fast forward to a few weeks later. My boss, Abby Johnson, myself, and several others of her senior team spent some time with a group of ninth graders – boys and girls. And we spent a lunch with them playing the math version of Jeopardy! Right. Because we are trying to teach them the basics of financial literacy. And we were stunned to watch, that not one girl raised their hand for that hour. They let all the boys answer all the questions and get all the prizes – even when we tried to prompt them into answering some of those questions. And you could feel the stereotypes just settling into the room. Right. And so this bothered me a lot so I went back and looked at some of the research on what happens between girls in grade school and when they get into high school, particularly in terms of matters regarding finance and math. And this is what we found, fourth graders, they like math, but then when they get to college, huge drop off. Because women aren’t supposed to be good at math. 60% of elementary school girls feel happy about the way they are. That number goes to half by the time they get to high school. Almost half of elementary school girls take pride in their schoolwork. It’s down to one in six by the time they get to high school. And so now we fast forward to all of you. And the good news is, you’ve accomplished a lot. And so we are making advances in the workplace; we are working hard for the money you earn. And yet we still see there’s a confidence gap on some really important things. There’s a confidence gap in terms of asking for salaries, for salary increases. There’s a confidence gap in terms of career advancement. We don’t think it’s polite to assert ourselves. And there is a clearly a confidence gap in terms of women thinking they’re good enough in terms of how to invest that hard earned savings And I feel really passionately about this. Because I know myself, and I see, so often, how much women do. How committed they are to achieving their full potential. And what we miss sometimes in that equation is that it’s not just about earning the money, it’s about saving the money. But it’s not just about saving the money, it’s about investing it so you can actually live the life you’ve earned and have dreamed of. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, Member NYSE, SIPC, 900 Salem Street, Smithfield, RI 02917 720652.2.0

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