Language Gender Marking and the Gender Gap in Financial Knowledge

Abstract

Studies show that women perform worse on financial knowledge tests, which contributes to broader gender‐based inequalities. However, the reasons for this phenomenon are not yet fully understood. Using data on grammatical categories related to gender from the World Atlas of Language Structures, combined with financial knowledge data from the Eurobarometer survey, we test the hypothesis that the gender gap in financial knowledge to the disadvantage of women is associated with the degree of gender marking in languages spoken across European Union countries. Anchored in human capital theory, social identity theory, and the linguistic relativism hypothesis, the analysis reveals that women consistently perform worse than men in financial knowledge tests and that this gap is significantly larger in countries where more gendered languages are spoken. Our results are robust to the specification of the critical variables—financial knowledge and the language gendering index—and to the model used. The findings underscore the socio‐economic implications of linguistic structures and advocate for culturally aware financial education interventions to mitigate gender disparities in financial literacy.