Reimagining Women’s Finance: Behavioural Patterns, Policy Implications and Pathways for Empowerment

Financial planning becomes one of the cornerstones in empowering women by making them independent.The World Economic Forum (2025) has classified India as the 131st among 148 countries on the Global Gender Gap Index, which indicates that gender inequality, especially in economic engagement and access to opportunities, remains an issue in the country.Women have limited independence in making financial and investment decisions in spite of the achievements in financial inclusion.However, recent reports indicate that approximately 47%-56 percent of women in India make independent financial and investment decisions respectively, and remain underrepresented in formal investments.This paper is an effort to analyse the effect of different demographic variables on Personal Finance Planning Behaviour (PFPB) of women government school teachers in Sivasagar District, Assam and their degree of Reimagining Women's Finance: Behavioural Patterns, Policy Implications and Pathways for Empowerment https://iaeme.com/Home/journal/IJM157 editor@iaeme.comPFPB on its seven constructs.Stratified random sampling has been used to select a sample of 388 teachers.The results indicate that the PFPB of women teachers is moderate.Financial behaviour is found to be largely affected by demographic factors, including age, marital status, income, dependents, work experience and family type, whereas the type of accommodation does not have any effect.Older and higher-income women exhibited stronger financial planning, whereas postgraduates unexpectedly reported weaker PFPB than undergraduates.The analysis has determined that policies of financial inclusion must extend beyond the ownership of accounts and the focus must be on the utilisation of financial services.