DNB is Norway’s largest bank. In the Dutch Equilelap Gender Equality Report from 2019, DNB ranked as the top company in Norway when it comes to gender equality – placing fourth globally within finance, and eight in total. As a company at the forefront of gender equality, they wanted to take on the Gender Wealth Gap in Norway. Looking into their own figures and analyzes they found an extremely imbalanced economical distribution. All parameters, from bank deposits, capital income and wealth, showed that Norwegian men were much richer than women. Beyond a wage gap, men invest far more of their money than women, which has resulted in a Gender Wealth Gap now equal to the entire state budget of Norway (NOK 1216 billion) DNB called out for an important conversation around gender inequality in Norwegian investments – launching a campaign made to inspire and engage women to invest.

Norway is ranked best in the world when it comes to gender equality. But as progressive as we might be in some areas, there is one important issue no one seem to be talking about - the overwhelming difference between men and women when it comes to money. Equal wage has long been a discussion, but it’s what men and women do, or don’t do with the money they earn that results in the true wealth gap. As one of the richest countries in the world, many look to Norway in how we distribute and earn our wealth. So when we’re supposed to also be best in the world when it comes to gender equality, there needs to be change in how women and men relate to each other financially. Having the social role of Norway’s biggest bank, DNB wanted to call out for an important conversation around gender inequality in Norwegian economy. Not just only around how Norway’s list of the top 400 richest is composed of 87,5% men, but running through every aspect of financial investments – right down to how couples distribute their money between them.

Insights: While working through the insights with DNB, we found that Norwegian men have almost an entire Norwegian state budget more in wealth than Norwegian women (NOK 1216 billion). Norwegian men own 80 per cent of all private equity values on the stock exchange, and last year 80 per cent of all share dividends went to men. Even if all wages were equal tomorrow, men would still earn 53 billion more than women. The ones who run the world, are the ones who own it. And Norway is certainly not owned by women. To give Norwegian women a serious wake-up call and hopefully spark an actual change, we put our insights to good use and launched #girlsinvest: A full-scale educational campaign aimed to engage, inspire and motivate women to invest more of their money.

We wanted to use our insights and findings around the Gender Wealth Gap to engage women to take more control over their own finances, by revealing our findings in a full-scale campaign. As the statistics in themselves were eye-opening enough on their own, we gathered all our insights, and used them directly in the communication itself. The result was #girlsinvest: an insight-based campaign with startling findings to help shatter the illusion of Norwegian equality - and the first ever commercial message to shed light on the Gender Wealth Gap we have in Norway.

To start the conversation, we made a film where we got Beyoncés approval to strip the word “girls” from the world’s most iconic female anthem “Run the World”. The film ends with the line “We can’t run the world if we don’t own it.” The message was supported by an integrated campaign aimed to engage, inspire and motivate women to invest more of their money. We made a website where women could educate themselves in the investment world and get a full understanding of the Gender Wealth Gap. Facts were projected on the walls of the Norwegian Stock Exchange. We also teamed up with Norway’s equivalent to Forbes, Kapital magazine, where their annual list of Norway’s 400 richest this year included a twin magazine from DNB – the exact same list, but without all the men.

The #girlsinvest campaign sparked a massive conversation. Every major news outlet in Norway discussed the topic – resulting in #girlsinvest becoming most talked-about commercial campaign in Norway in 2019. As the conversation grew, every major Norwegian bank published their support for the initiative, and joined DNB in order to work together to help close the Gender Wealth Gap. And women started investing. In just the first three weeks of the campaign, total investments made by women went up by +30%, and it’s still growing to this day. 83% increase in new female investors compared to the previous year. 53% increase in total. And for the first time in Norwegian history, there were more women than men who started to invest in funds.