President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, has launched a pan-European initiative aimed at improving financial literacy among women, warning that gaps in financial knowledge continue to shape economic outcomes across the continent.

Speaking at an event marking International Women’s Day, Lagarde unveiled the “EuroSteps Walking Challenge”, a new programme designed to deliver short financial education lessons through a mobile step-tracking challenge.

“Financial literacy shapes choices across an entire lifetime,” Lagarde told attendees in Frankfurt. “And right now, too many women are making those choices without the knowledge and the know-how they need. Closing this gap matters because it empowers women to take control of their financial lives.”

The event brought together senior policymakers and academics to discuss how improving financial education could strengthen economic resilience and narrow gender disparities in savings, investment and retirement planning.

The panel featured Yannis Stournaras, governor of the Bank of Greece; Joachim Nagel, president of the Deutsche Bundesbank; and Tabea Bucher‑Koenen, co-director of the Mannheim Institute of Financial Education. The discussion was moderated by Patrick Jenkins, chair of the Financial Times Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign.

Participants argued that financial knowledge is increasingly critical as households navigate complex decisions around pensions, credit, housing and long-term savings. Research across Europe has consistently shown that women report lower levels of financial confidence and financial knowledge than men, a gap that economists say can contribute to disparities in investment participation and retirement security.

The EuroSteps challenge aims to tackle that gap using a format designed to integrate learning into everyday routines.

The programme combines daily step-counting with short financial education messages, delivered through mobile notifications. Participants will receive two or three short lessons per week, tailored to their local language and linked to trusted national financial education resources.

Registration for the initiative opened on Monday, with the step-counting challenge set to begin on 1 April and run for four weeks. Participants will also be eligible to win prizes during the programme.

ECB officials said the design was intended to make financial education feel accessible rather than intimidating, particularly for people who may not typically seek out formal financial learning programmes. The campaign forms part of a broader effort by the Eurosystem to strengthen financial literacy across the euro area.

Vanya Dragomanovich, founder of SharesSavvy, a financial coaching platform focused on female investors, welcomed the initiative but struck a cautious note.

“As a financial coach who works mostly with budding female investors, we see a lot of women shy away from trading because of a lack of confidence,” she said. “But that confidence can be built up by understanding the basics of trading, learning how to keep yourself from losing money and learning how to make informed trading choices rather than guessing, or falling back on AI for recommendations.”

That last point is worth dwelling on. In an era when AI-generated investment tips are proliferating across social media, the risk is that women who have taken their first steps through an app like EuroSteps look to algorithms rather than genuine understanding when it comes to making real money decisions — which is precisely the kind of informed independence the ECB says it wants to foster.

Over the past year, the bloc’s central banks have established a financial literacy network aimed at coordinating initiatives, improving research and sharing best practice among national authorities. One of the network’s priorities will be the creation of a harmonised dataset on financial literacy across Europe, allowing policymakers to measure progress more effectively and identify where education initiatives are having the greatest impact.

The group is also developing a shared repository of financial education programmes and resources, enabling national central banks to draw on each other’s tools and experiences when designing new initiatives.

EuroSteps is a welcome and imaginative start. But the ECB and its partners will need to think carefully about what happens when the four weeks are up, and how to sustain and deepen the engagement it has sparked, particularly if the goal is not just financial awareness, but genuine participation in Europe’s capital markets.

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