2025-03-08

Make personal finance a school subject

Economic equality between women and men has increased in recent decades. Men still earn more, own more and also have deeper financial knowledge, which gives them greater influence.

Until 2019, the wage gap between men and women gradually decreased. Since then, the gap has remained unchanged, only to increase again in 2023. Although the increase was only 0.1 percentage points, it is worrying. In 2022, the income gap was almost twice as large as the wage gap, 19.4 percent compared to 9.9 percent. This is because women work part-time to a greater extent than men and have greater absences (1). The total average income gap over a lifetime is SEK 6.3 million if capital income is also included (2).

That inequality continues into old age is not surprising but shocking. Women's average pension amounts to 17,000 SEK per month and men's to 24,200, a pension gap of 30 percent despite society's efforts (housing allowances, etc.) to reduce the gap (3).

We at Zonta want to highlight the problem of economic inequality. Financial education must be given a greater place in society – knowledge of personal finances (for example, the importance of saving and making a budget) and public finances. The EU's Pay Transparency Directive (4) for equal pay for both sexes also highlights the importance of women's knowledge of finances.

It is important that both men and women understand the relationship between loans and interest rates or how high inflation affects our purchasing power, in order to be able to make the right decisions about their own finances (5). We therefore urge the Riksdag and the government to ensure that the subject of personal finance is included in the curriculum as mandatory for everyone in upper secondary school. Without broad economic knowledge, we can never achieve complete gender equality.

Sources: 1) The Swedish Mediation Institute, 2) The Swedish Gender Equality Agency (JÄMY), 3) The Swedish Pensions Agency via JÄMY, 4) The Council of Europe and EU 2023/970 and 5) Per Skedinger's research, Institute for Business Research.