Do Female Fund Managers outperform their Male Counterparts? A Quantitative Analysis of UK Retail Funds

Abstract Why are there so few women in finance and even fewer managing funds? There is a major discrepancy between the number of female and male fund managers worldwide. The aim of this paper is to ascertain if gender is a contributing factor to fund managers’ performance. This is examined through analysis of data from 2012-2022 attained from eight major IA sectors of funds (Asian, European, North American, UK All Companies and UK Income equity funds; Targeted Absolute Return, Sterling Corporate Bond and 40-85 Sector funds) which are available to UK retail investors. This paper aims to compare the performance of all funds in the data pool with funds that involve one or more female managers through a quantitative and qualitative analysis. There is no significant research on the performance of women fund managers for UK investors. The authors intend to fill this gap with this paper. We find that funds managed by women or mixed teams produce similar and sometimes better risk-adjusted returns than male-only managed funds but are few in numbers and find it difficult to raise significant amounts of assets. JEL classification numbers: D61, G11, G14, J16, M14. Keywords: Gender, Investment, Asset Management, Wealth, Diversity.