Stanford Graduate School of BusinessIFDM TPF Session 6: Money and Women
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Ohio State's Women and Money Course 0:08
Cecilia, a professor and chair of consumer sciences at Ohio State, introduces a new general education course called Women and Money: Citizenship in a Modern World. It carries four credit hours instead of the usual three, which makes it attractive since one course then replaces two. The course sits inside the required citizenship theme of the general education curriculum, grew from 1,000 students in its first spring offering to 1,500 in the fall, and is taught by three instructors with 31 teaching assistants. About 63 percent of enrolled students are women, compared to only about 20 percent women in the finance major, so the course is meant to widen the pipeline of women into financial planning.
Course Design and Research Project 8:00
Each week follows the same simple structure: a citizenship lecture, a financial citizenship lecture, a personal finance lecture, and a field survey lecture, with the same quiz, discussion post, and life skills task every time, such as starting to invest with five dollars. The fourth credit hour comes from an original research project where students write a survey, each collect responses from five other Ohio State students, analyze the data with AI, and present an infographic to someone outside the course. Cecilia recommends recorded guest lectures from financial planners, building on an already popular course template rather than starting from scratch, using short readings instead of a textbook, creating a course website, and working as a team, crediting a 100,000 dollar gift from financial planner Peggy Ruhlin for funding the course's development.
Women's finance research findings 22:01
Research at Smith found that women face income disparities from interrupted careers due to caregiving, which weakens retirement savings. Low financial knowledge was not tied to weak math skills, even high-math women lacked it, and even women working as finance executives knew little about their own personal finances. Older women and those with MBAs scored highest, often because retirement planning becomes urgent around age fifty. Confidence in financial knowledge mattered as much as the knowledge itself.
Building and sustaining the program 25:01
Naming the center with "woman" in it was deliberate, drawing national press and donations, including a fifty dollar check from a stranger. Funding came from alumnae, financial institutions, and a million-dollar ask to Goldman Sachs. Courses stayed noncredit, popular, and lunch-provided, later renamed in ways that reduced their focus. Retiring faculty and shifting lunchtime demand created challenges, leading to peer-led "money mentors." Separately, Cecilia's Women in Money course drew forty percent male students and survived a state anti-diversity law by using neutral, careful course-proposal language.
Naming Courses To Send A Message 43:02
The panel explains that keeping the word women in the program name was deliberate, meant to signal that the course was financing the life students want and speaking directly to them. Principles of investing was chosen for lack of a better alternative. A faculty member admits humanities students rarely enroll, around seven percent, prompting a joking suggestion from Anna Maria to create financial literacy for poets.
Gendered Names Still Draw Women 45:30
A California program director running Women in Leadership says she fields calls asking if the name will change under anti-DEI policies, and she answers that the word woman includes men. A data lab organizer notes women show up to events branded as women-led far more than to identical events without that framing, even though men also attend.
Too Early To Measure Major Shift 46:30
Asked whether the course has pushed more women into financial planning as a major, the presenter says it is only the second semester, so it is too early to tell, though she hopes so. Financial planning at the undergraduate level is nearly fifty-fifty, unlike the graduate level, where women are scarce.
Funding Came From Restricted Donations 47:30
Smith College's course was paid for through restricted donation funding tied to its women's financial initiative, not volunteer labor, so faculty pay was never questioned as long as students enrolled. COVID disrupted everything, including retirements, and the program is still rebuilding toward what it was before.
Enrollment Jumped Through Grassroots Promotion 48:30
Ohio State's course grew from one thousand to fifteen hundred students in a semester after only the first offering needed promotion: a website, outreach to academic advising and large student organizations, video introductions from the instructor, and embedding course information in email signatures. The team also monitored Reddit threads where students asked which four-credit course to take, replying directly with details about the new women and money class, which filled within eighteen days.
Industry Wants More Female Advisors 52:03
Firms are actively seeking female financial advisors, but only about twenty percent of CFP coursework students are women. Part of the problem is a misconception that advising is Wall Street style investment work rather than a relationship-driven, psychology-heavy helping profession, something guest speakers in the course aim to correct.
Asynchronous Format Fits Intro Courses 54:00
The course runs fully online and asynchronously, which is standard for large introductory-level classes at the 2000 to 3000 level, since in-person sections cannot reach as many students. Major-level courses remain in person, but large draw classes, including one on exercise and nutrition, use the same online model for flexibility.
Word Of Mouth Builds Enrollment 56:01
A faculty member notes students and even parents discuss these courses on Reddit and Facebook, which fuels rapid enrollment once a program is established. Her own introduction to personal finance course grew from one or two sections around 2015 to five or six sections with nearly three hundred students today, filling almost immediately once registration opens.
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