With International Women’s Day approaching, we thought it would be important to discuss women’s roles in the wills and estate planning industry. As gender equality, feminism and empowerment for women is in the public eye more frequently, more and more women are realising that estate planning and writing a will is extremely important.
Women are increasingly becoming business owners and entrepreneurs which brings with it more financial responsibility, and a greater need for a will. Recent polls and statistics illustrate that more women than men have written wills in the last four years. According to the most recent You Gov poll in 2017, 37% of women have a will in place where only 36% of men have. Will Suite have also seen this increase in their annual report in 2020 that shows that more wills are being written by women at 51.74% than by men at 46.2%.
This in turn has meant that more women have turned to will writing and estate planning as a career path. Here at the Society of Will Writers 32% of our members are women. While not being as large of a percentage as we would have hoped, it is a step in the right direction towards equality as this percentage has increased from 28% since 2017.
The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is break the bias and we think that is extremely pertinent in the will writing and estate planning community. Many women can feel a lack of confidence in their role or feel unsupported and undervalued, here at the Society, we would love to support our female members more in their careers and see more women joining as members.
If any of our female members or members of the public want more information on women in this industry or are looking for a community, then we would recommend a look at a group named Women in Wills who in their words,
“Foster collaboration between women across the wills and probate sector”.
They hold networking events and talks educating women and creating a supportive community that can help women to create friendships and share knowledge of their industry.
For more information, or to find a member of the society click here.
