A Financial Literacy Measure: Gendering and Contextualising Financial Technicalities

This article analyses the relationship between law, gender, and finance, with a particular focus on gender inequalities in the financial literacy measure which was constructed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It seeks to trouble predominant claims about financial literacy as an effective, ‘edu-regulatory’ policy to address gender inequalities in the financial services market. The article suggests that instead of acting as a neutral assessment of people’s financial literacy, the measure, in fact, embodies gendered assumptions about finance and financial practices. The measure presents a financial world in abstract terms and fails to account for different contexts within which financial decisions are made. The article exposes the measure’s problematic deployment of the literacy/illiteracy binary in thinking about financial gender inequalities. Rather than being attentive to the ways in which gender inequalities are produced in financial markets, the OECD measure misattributes these to irrational financial behaviour, and further reproduces the marginalisation of women in the global financial market.