Amid the stock investment boom, the number of women investing in stocks in South Korea has doubled over the past four years, according to data compiled by the Korea Securities Depository on Thursday.

While the number of stock investors in Asia’s fourth-largest economy recorded 9.19 million, the number of female stock traders came to 3.88 million as of the end of December last year, up from 1.94 million four years earlier, the data showed.

The growth rate for female stock investors, 77.8 percent over the cited period, was much higher than the corresponding figure for men. The number of male stock investors logged 5.21 million last year, compared with 2.93 million in 2016.

The total number of shares held by women soared by 53.4 percent, or 4.6 billion shares, to 13.2 billion shares for the period of 2016-2020.

Since surpassing the 2 million mark for the first time in 2017, the number of female traders has continued to rise. The figure surged last year in particular, marking a 60.9 percent on-year increase, or an increase of 1.47 million people from the previous year’s 2.41 million.

The number of male stock investors soared 40.8 percent, marking 1.51 million more than last year’s 3.7 million.

Market experts said the sudden jump in the number of female stock investors resulted from their frustration over lagging behind in financial asset expansion amid the country’s stock investment craze. Easy access to insights and market information, and more convenient transactions, have helped them become traders, they said.

“Many (people) decided to begin stock investment last year and of those, women who had relatively less interest in trading newly joined the trend. It’s the process of normalizing the gender gap between men and women in investment,” said Hwang Sei-woon, a research fellow at the Korea Capital Market Institute.

“Until the recent boom in stock investments, male investors dominated the market. But since stock trading has merged a way of building financial assets in the country lately, it is quite natural to observe a sharp rise in female stock investors.”

By Jie Ye-eun (yeeun@heraldcorp.com)