KARACHI: People don’t think of financial wellness as a life skill, said Maham Wajahat – the founder of HerStash, a financial wellness platform for women – at an informative session organised to teach women about the virtues of investing in the stock market.

“I believe women started working on such a large scale in the last 15-20 years. Before they either weren’t allowed, or weren’t willing, or weren’t educated enough, so readiness for investment was never a priority. But now that they have money, investing is necessary,” she told the audience at the event, organised jointly with the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Tuesday.

Aimed at encouraging women to practice financial autonomy, the event heard how financial woes have been compounded by rising inflation, and the dropping buying power of the rupee – according to one participant, Rs100,000 in 2010 terms is equivalent to just over Rs25,000 in today’s terms.

According to Ms Wajahat, people think that people who already have a professional finance background are the only ones capable of investing. “That mindset needs to change.”

Raeda Latif of PSX and Tahir Abbas of Arif Habib Ltd, took turns to explain the game, in a ‘Stocks-101’ kind of manner, diving into the absolute basics of financial literacy, how the stock market functions, what numbers to look at, how to research companies and sectors before making a potential investment, and then covering how brokers work and their role as a vital cog in the machinery.

When Ms Latif asked how many women managed their own money, a dreadful majority kept their hands neatly folded in their laps. Yet, the participants were quite enthusiastic and seemed eager to learn.

The audience included a diverse group of women; mothers accompanied daughters; teachers accompanied students; the odd self-employed lady or ‘on sabbatical’ mother partook of the insight as well.

Rabia and Afshan Qazi were one such duo. With the constant encouragement of a brother who trades bitcoin, Rabia, currently in her second semester of university, plans on investing as soon as possible to improve her quality of life and turned to the event to understand the basics and figure out the first steps.

Published in Dawn, January 22th, 2025