53% of women want to learn financial literacy: results of the Ukrainian Women's Congress study with the support of Oschadbank

The level of financial literacy of women is lower than that of men, and more than half of women want to learn financial literacy. These data were obtained as a result of a joint project of Oschadbank and the Ukrainian Women's Congress aimed at improving financial literacy among women from small communities.

The results of the project were published on July 2 by the Ukrinform news agency.

Speaking about the idea of the project, Rosa Tapanova, a member of the Supervisory Board of Oschadbank, emphasized that with the outbreak of full-scale war, Oschad became not just a bank but a full partner for its clients: in financing and grants, in empowerment, in expert support, and training.

"To restore the country's economy, it is imperative to engage women more actively, including by changing their specialties and raising their career ambitions. Our cooperation with the UWC and the results of the joint research prove that we are moving in the right direction: the educational component is extremely important for this," said Rosa Tapanova.

Svitlana Voitsekhovska, co-founder and director of the Ukrainian Women's Congress, cited statistics showing a significant increase in the number of women who became family breadwinners and family budget managers because of the war.

"These women have taken on new functions and need new knowledge. Similarly, women who have successfully started their own businesses but don't know how to scale up need knowledge. That's why we have implemented this project together with Oschadbank: we have sociologically studied which aspects of financial literacy are lacking, what to pay attention to, and where to make banking services more accessible. We want women to become more skillful and effective," said Svitlana Voitsekhovska.

According to the survey, women's financial literacy is significantly lower than that of men, despite their higher level of education. For example, only a quarter of women were able to calculate the annual loan rate based on the monthly rate. Among men, 37% coped with the task.

"This can be explained by the fact that women's incomes are lower and, accordingly, they have fewer skills to use their surplus funds. At the same time, lower financial literacy contributes to poverty, creating a vicious circle," said Dmytro Savchuk, director of Info Sapiens LLC, the company that conducted the survey.

"Oschadbank considers supporting women's business an important priority. The bank actively helps women entrepreneurs not only survive but also develop during the full-scale war. In our opinion, the potential of women's business has not yet been fully realized. We want more Ukrainian women to start their own businesses, gain new knowledge and thus new opportunities. Cooperation with the UWC is another step in this direction. The sociological data obtained indicate a significant demand for financial literacy training for women, and we will use these results to plan information campaigns in this area," said Sergii Naumov, Chairman of the Management Board of Oschadbank.

The full report on the survey of financial literacy of Ukrainians is available here.