This study investigates whether (lack of) familiaritywith the language of investor communication may contribute to an explanation of the well-documented gen-der gap in financial decision-making (i.e. women are more risk averse than men)and financial literacy (i.e. women are less literate than men). Using an interdisci-plinary framework that combines insights from Behavioral Economics, Finance and Linguistics, we analyze metaphors used in websites that target beginning retail investors in three different languages: Dutch, Italian and English. Employ-ing the conceptual metaphor analysis proposed by Cameron and Low (1999) and Charteris-Black (2004), we find that in all three languages the metaphors come from the same conceptual domains; namely, war, health, physical activity, game, farming and the five senses. As these domains refer to worlds that are predomi-nantly and (stereo)typically masculine, we conclude that the language of investor communication may give rise to feelings of familiarity and belonging among men while creating feelings of distance and non-belonging among women. Based on our findings, we conclude that further research is needed to assess whether lan-guage could be a tool to reduce the gender gap in financial attitudes and behavior.