A STUDY OF THE INVESTMENT MINDSET AND CHALLENGES OF MIDDLE-CLASS WORKING WOMEN IN THE CAPITAL MARKET: EVIDENCE FROM NAGPUR CITY

Abstract

The ever growing rise in the number of women in the labor force has enhanced their ability to earn incomes but at the same time they are not doing much in regard to their roles concerning capital market investment particularly among the middle-class working women. In this paper, the mindset of the working middle class will be reviewed and the issues that middle class women must confront when trading in the capital market in the Nagpur City. The study will target learning their perception towards risk, investment preferences, decision making behaviour and social-economic and psychological limitations that influence their investment decisions. The study is a case study and is based on primary data used in scientific studies through the systematic questionnaire that was administered to employed middle income women who worked in various areas of Nagpur City. The descriptive statistics and tools of inference have been used to analyse the data. These results determine that despite their growing urge to remain capital market instruments they are impaired in engagement by issues such as low financial literacy, being risk-aversive and risk-makers, low-quality professional guidance, their time, due to their duality of roles as well as their socio-cultural factors. The paper has identified that there is a requirement to possess certain financial education initiatives, gender-based investment advisory services, and enabling policy tool to enhance the involvement of the working women in the capital markets. Hopefully, the results would be applied by other policymakers, financial institutions, and the interested researchers to the inclusive financial development