Fear and insecurity holding women back from achieving their dreams

In a new survey from AMP, results reveal the interesting differences in how men and women go about achieving their dreams  – with almost double the female respondents (44% vs 28%) saying fear and insecurity has held them back.

This announcement comes as AMP launches its $200,000 AMP ‘Do Your Thing’ Scholarship programme for 2014.

The survey also found around 20% more females say they have been restricted by financial constraints (62%) compared to their male counterparts (43%), and interestingly significantly more women than men thought “any age” is the ideal time to achieve a dream (73% vs 57%).

With Kiwis being such go-getters, it seems women have a slight edge over men in giving their dream or significant goal a try (72% vs 65%) - with almost 20% more female respondents saying family support allowed them to pursue it.

Both men and women agreed that family would benefit most from them achieving their dreams (both at 61%) and surprisingly, more women than men said they would ask their family (37% vs 27%) or the government (34% vs 23%) for financial funding, yet both would still choose a loan as their preferred funding option (48% & 51%).

Both genders were most likely to be inspired by their friends first. Women were inspired by their parents second, with men being inspired by their their colleagues, famous New Zealanders and then their parents.

Jeff Ruscoe, Chief Customer Officer, at AMP says: “With $200,000 available from our Scholarship pool  of funds, we hope talented, passionate and determined Kiwis - of any age or gender - will apply to start making their goal a reality.”

“Most people, at some stage in their life have a dream. No matter what age, or point people are in in life, we want to encourage everyone to do their thing and turn their dreams into a reality”, says Ruscoe.

This year, applications for AMP ‘Do Your Thing’ Scholarships are open until 16 September.