| dc.description.abstract | Traditionally Indian women were confined to the family. In today’s social settings, women have proved that they can match with abilities of the males in undertaking all kinds of jobs. Due to the family pressures, traditional bonds and beliefs, working women are not fully empowered to take certain decisions on their own in general and some area like investment decisions, in particular. It is the persistent feeling in the society that investment related decisions of working women are greatly influenced by non-investment related factors and domination by male members. In this context an attempt is made to study how far working women enjoy freedom to take investment related decisions on their own and pattern of investments in the male dominated investment world in India. Decision making pattern of working women was studied by taking 227 respondents from three cities: Ahmedabad (108), Solapur (60) and Gulbarga (59). Questionnaire method was adopted and data were collected on saving, types of investment, influencers, expenditure and decision-makers.
The important conclusions from the study are: There is no significant difference among the respondents across the cities with respect to age, family size, type of family, marital status, level of education, occupation and annual income. Working women took independent decisions in the household related activities like buying groceries and vegetables. The joint decision making was witnessed in all other activities: school fees, gifts, rent, bills, clothes, vacation, servants and others. There is no significant percentage savings difference across the cities. This confined our assumptions that working women across the cities are investing their saving in one form or other. Across the cities, higher awareness levels of working women on various types of investments were noticed. Among type of investment, high level of awareness was witnessed in LIC, Bank and Post Office related investments. Moderate level of awareness was also noticed in shares, bonds and debentures. In creating awareness about various types of investments, Agents played a crucial role followed by newspapers and friends. In personal items related investment, higher preference was observed to gold compared to other items like land and household articles and the high level of percentage was noticed in Gulbarga than other two cities. The organisation does play a significant role in investment patterns of working women in case of Ahmedabad and Solapur. While making investment decisions, working women were found to be aversive to risks. In relation to amount, time and type of investment, working women were mainly decision-makers themselves. Others who influenced the decision making process were husband, friends followed by in-laws. Investment companies also played a crucial role by sharing information, providing avenues to the investors. | en_US |
