RESEARCH TRENDS AND GENDER DISPARITIES IN FINANCIAL LITERACY: A GLOBAL BIBLIOMETRIC REVIEW

Abstract

Financial literacy is an essential part of personal financial health, economic stability, and inclusive development, but massive gender inequality in financial literacy exists in both countries and socio-economic backgrounds. Although accumulating literature has been conducted on gender differences in financial knowledge and behavior, the booming recent literature on the topic has led to fragmentation and thus it is not easy to derive a coherent picture on the intellectual organization, thematic coverage and geographical repartition of this literature. The given research fills this gap by performing a global bibliographic review of literature on gender differences in financial literacy. Based on bibliographic information of the Scopus database, the article employs bibliometric methods to depict the trends of publications, citation patterns, co-authorship groups, keyword co-occurrence, and location contributions. The findings demonstrate that the volume of scholarly work has been rising significantly and continuously since the mid-2010s, which suggests the maturation of the field and the expansion of the interdisciplinary interest. Thematic analysis reveals that the measurement of financial literacy, gender disparities, financial inclusion and education have been the main focus in the research whereas those themes that are based on behavioral variables, digital finance, and policy interventions are relatively underdeveloped. Geographic analysis reveals the existence of strong regional disproportions with the research output being strongly centred in high-income economies with little reflection of the low- and middle-income regions. This study presents a synthesis of the literature mapping the development and organization of the literature on gender-specific financial literacy-related studies and outlines the essential gaps and directions of research in the future. The results can provide useful information to the researchers and policymakers who want to develop gender-sensitive financial literacy campaigns and facilitate the creation of knowledge that would be more representative of the entire world