Most people think of Wall Street as a decidedly male-centric place, a view pushed by movies like “The Wolf of Wall Street” that show the testosterone-fueled excesses of stock brokers in the 1990s. Yet if you look at statistics, women are becoming investors at a higher rate than men (and statistically earning higher returns).

Women are changing the landscape of retail shareholders, and publicly traded companies can learn a lot from them, especially when it comes to brand loyalty. Women make up nearly 40% of individual investors, a percentage that continues to increase every year.

The “investment gap” between men and women remains. Men invest on a larger scale than women. A survey by online bank N26 found that European women invest 29% less than their male counterparts, but that nearly 2 out of 3 wanted to invest more. The investment gap is huge — trillions of dollars — despite the tremendous gains women have made in recent years building wealth and investing. It’s not a surprise given that the financial sector was created by men, for men. According to Ellevest, an advising platform created primarily for women investors, society conditions women to believe they are not good with money and women simply do not have control of as much money to invest as men.

That’s beginning to change.

Women are beginning to wield greater influence over investable capital, voting shares of stock, and corporate board seats than at any previous point in history, according to Morgan Stanley. As of 2022, women occupied 32% of S&P 500 company board seats, as reported by consulting firm Spencer Stuart.

And there’s a growing interest in investing among women, especially those in younger generations, a 2023 Fidelity survey discovered. The survey found that 71% of Gen Z women are investing, compared to 63% of millennials, 55% of Gen X and 57% of boomer women.

So why aren’t more women investing? It could be as simple as the fact that women statistically earn less money than men. A Morningstar survey found that once you control for income, the differences between the investing habits of men and women disappear. When researchers looked at the investment behaviors of men and women by income bracket, they found they saved and invested in the same way. The problem is that men make up more of the higher income brackets.

As society shifts, so does the proportion of women investors. By 2030, women in America are expected to control much of the $30 trillion in financial assets that baby boomers possess today, according to McKinsey.

Statistically, women are better retail investors. A 2021 analysis by Fidelity of more than 5 million customer accounts showed that women outperform men by an average of 40 basis points annually, or 0.4%, from 2011 to 2020. Research has also found that men trade more and are more overconfident than women and that women trade with more discipline, take the right kind of risks, and invest with a sense of purpose with nearly half of women rating a company’s social mission as extremely or very important to them.

According to a story in Forbes, male underperformance is also seen among the pros. “The tendency of women to outperform is not only seen in retail investors,” writes Dr. Daniel Crosby in his book, The Laws of Wealth. “Female hedge fund managers have consistently and soundly thumped their male colleagues as well.”

Financial literacy remains a barrier to women investors as well, and part of the blame falls on the investment industry. The industry is not engaging women the same way as men with 86% of asset managers surveyed by BNY Mellon targeting male customers. That could be because just 35% of women are asset managers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Women are less likely to invest in an employer-sponsored plan or a brokerage account, Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies found.

While progress has been made, a 2023 Fidelity survey also found that only 33% of women see themselves as investors. A 2021 George Washington University study found that 54% of women surveyed self-identified as having a high level of investing knowledge, compared to 71% of men.

Women are starting more businesses and beginning to lead more companies, though statistics on women executives remain scarce. Individual shareholders can invest in companies led by women or through the SPDR MSCI USA Gender Diversity ETF (Tii:SHE), a fund that picks companies based on the MSCI USA Gender Diversity Select Index, which seeks to provide exposure to U.S. companies that promote gender diversity throughout all levels of their organizations.

The pandemic increased interest among women investors, according to Barclays Smart Investor. Since the beginning of 2020, more than a quarter (27%) of new investors are women.

There are many ways for publicly traded companies to capture the imagination of these new women investors. A Harris Poll conducted by TiiCKER found that 80% of retail shareholders indicated they are loyal to the brands and companies in which they have invested and 77% indicated a public company could strengthen that loyalty by offering a shareholder reward or perk.