Exploring the Factors Resisting Stock Market Participation among Indian Working Women: An Empirical Investigation

The beginning of 2014 has witnessed the escalating flow of capital, new pinnacle for benchmark indices and market capitalization which has carved out an investor's encouraging climate for investment. India has an awful retail participation in equity markets. There is an unambiguous upheaval to bring the retail investor back into the stock markets. Women are becoming one of the largest groups of investors across the globe. Many households shy away from stock markets, because of lack of adequate financial knowledge on stocks, the stock market working and asset pricing. This leads to stumpy retail participation putting the Indian stock markets in 'dilemma'. This study attempts to determine the factors which resist Indian working women from stock market participation considering equity as an Investment avenue. The researcher applies principal component factor analysis as the statistical tool to determine the stock market resistance factors. Results reveal that there exist five factors, namely, psychosomatic fear factor, risk factor, monetary factor, unawareness factor, information factor are the predominant factors which affect the women's participation in the Indian equity market. The researcher concludes that effective participation in the investor education programmes boost the women investor's confidence which enables them to get best insights of various equity oriented securities.