So far, the state has hosted 33 conferences, reaching 10,000 attendees. The daylong seminars feature keynotes and sessions from female financial planners.

However, focusing efforts on women alone only solves half the behavioral problem. Men may still unknowingly nurture their young daughters to be timid, uncertain and unconfident financial decision-makers.

Thus, Goldberg has deemed the women’s retirement gap as a bipartisan, gender-neutral problem.

“These are long-term cultural barriers that have evolved over time,” Goldberg said. “No one is consciously going out and doing these things. We’ve had plenty of men at our round tables who’ve said that they just didn’t understand what was happening and didn’t know what to do about it. Many were parents of daughters who saw what’s happening to their children as they grow up.”

The industry is missing a huge opportunity to embrace women as clients at a time when they’re becoming the primary breadwinners and the financial decision-makers of their households, said Williams, largely because women are stereotyped, even by the programs and initiatives designed to engage them in financial planning.

“We have a misperception that women are overly emotional, indecisive and self-doubting,” she said, adding that such myths must be debunked.

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