GoodTrust Survey: Time To Empower Women
Mar-05 2021
Women Play Critical Role In Protecting Our Digital Legacy
In honor of International Women's Day (IWD) and Women's History Month, a new survey conducted by GoodTrust to better understand the role that women play in managing and protecting the digital legacy of their family and themselves. It's clear from the survey that women play an important and primary role, but also that women have a greater opportunity to protect their own digital assets and memories.
The study reveals that women in the U.S. are often the primary caretaker of both estate matters and preserving digital assets when someone in the family passes away. Only 12% of women say that a man is the primary person taking care of the estate matters when someone in the family passes away or it is usually not clear who it is (54%).
More than a quarter of female respondents (26%) believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated the importance of protecting digital assets like photos, videos, e-mails, social media, financial accounts and more. In addition, COVID-19 pandemic prompted some 22% of women to talk about a person's last wishes in the event someone may pass away.
Another interesting finding was that 61% of women consider photos and videos more valuable than financial assets (42%) and healthcare data (25%) when it comes to preserving someone's digital legacy or their own.
An opportunity to take action
But 65% said they have no idea what happens to their digital accounts when they die, highlighting the need for easy, secure tools to manage digital assets and memories. However, 38% of women said they would like such a tool to manage memories, photos and videos; 29% also said they would use a service like GoodTrust to manage their digital legacy.
"We believe that women play the vital and primary role of protecting the digital assets and memories of most families," said Rikard Steiber, GoodTrust CEO and founder. "Women should be celebrated and empowered to continue protecting the digital legacy of us all."
To empower all women to better protect their digital afterlife, GoodTrust offers all women throughout the month of March one year of free GoodTrust Premium Plan (by using promotion code IWD2021 at checkout, $70 value). Please let your friends know!
Passing the torch across generations
According to the survey, there is also a notable difference between which documents and digital assets women believe they should have and which ones they actually have. For example, 50% of women responded that they think they should have a last will and testament, but only 29% actually have it. In addition, 42% of women who responded believe that a list of key online accounts, passwords, and other digital documentation is important, but only 26% have created it.
Despite that many women think medical directives (47%) and funeral directives (32%) are important, only 26% claim to have a medical directive and only 14% a funeral directive.
"The vast majority of caregivers are female," said Margo Georgiadis, former CEO for Ancestry.com and GoodTrust investor. "And women are also very much in the position of being the preservers of those memories," said Georgiadis. "The majority of our users [on Ancestry] were also women who are creating and preserving those family stories."
But do women want to live forever? When asked if they would like to live forever as an online AI hologram that future generations can talk and interact with, less than 10% were interested. However, since younger women were more interested (15%) we expect interest in the digital afterlife will increase over time. You can read more about the future of technology (AI, VR, etc.) with digital afterlife here.
The survey was conducted Feb. 26-Mar. 3, 2021, with 1,200 respondents aged 35-65+ across the U.S. using Google Surveys, please find the survey graphs below.