The new research highlighted in the study from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) shows a significant gender bias in how financial information is perceived, particularly in online financial forums. The study analyzed over 7 million comments on 200,000 articles posted on Seeking Alpha, a platform where individuals share stock market analyses and predictions. The findings suggest that, despite equal levels of informativeness and forecasting accuracy between male and female contributors, content from women received significantly less engagement, lower trust, and more disagreement.

Key findings included:

  • Female-authored articles received 40% fewer comments compared to those written by men.
  • There was more disagreement and stronger dissent against female-authored content, regardless of the author’s experience or the stock discussed.
  • The gender bias could not be explained by differences in background or expertise, and even when comparing male and female authors covering the same stock during the same period, the disparity remained.

This bias doesn’t just affect individual contributors but extends to the financial markets. More disagreement with female authors led to abnormal trading behaviour the next day, influencing stock prices based on gender-driven disagreement rather than informed decisions. This slows down accurate price discovery and contributes to uninformative trading.

The research emphasizes that gender bias in finance persists beyond professional settings and into investment social media, where women are seen as less credible, contributing to their underrepresentation. Only 6% of contributors on Seeking Alpha identified as female, signalling an unwelcoming environment for women.

These findings are consistent with other studies showing that women in finance and economics face more scrutiny, patronizing questioning, and unconscious biases, highlighting the deep-rooted gender stereotypes in financial professions. Increasing female representation in these spaces could challenge these biases and foster a more inclusive conversation in finance.