Key excerpt from the report:

“To explore society’s views on women and risk aversion, we examined 112 reports—such as those mentioned above—from corporations, NGOs, and multilateral organizations, all aimed at making the case for women’s economic inclusion. We also reviewed scholarly research on female risk aversion. The survey of reports found a near-universal assumption that women are more risk averse than men. Scholarly research, on the other hand, has demonstrated that the differences between men and women are much smaller than popularly assumed.

These conflicting results suggest that if we are going to bring women into the global economy effectively, we need to understand the propensity for risk that women and men have, under what conditions these behaviors express themselves, and what effect that ultimately has on women’s and men’s roles and status in society. This article is our effort to answer these important questions.”

Read the full report by Sarah Kaplan and Natassia Walley, Stanford Social Innovation Review here.