The XX Factor: Women in financial services

IS there a glass ceiling for women in business… or is it all just perception?

Having spoken to a select few senior women in finance who have reached high levels in their chosen financial careers, the issue of gender diversity, though dimmed from the sexism of the 20th century, remains.

Certain sectors within finance have a greater proportion of men, whilst many women cite issues with confidence as affecting their chances in business. It seems, rather than a top-down issue, to be an issue that can only be resolved from within.

Charlotte Tracy, director of corporate finance at PwC, said: “There are more boys in corporate finance.  Finance directors and managing directors tend to be male.”

A PwC report from earlier this year showed that female millennials – those born between 1980 and 1995 – were less likely to begin a career in the financial services, or continue in it as they believed that there was a glass ceiling that they could not smash through.

Tracy said: “There is that difference in confidence, women don’t necessarily push themselves forward as much as they should do even if they have equal ability. Men might be more pushy for opportunities and a promotion.

“Women need support to get to a stage where they’re comfortable to do that. It’s the responsibility of women themselves to push forward and take risks, and it’s important that their managers or mentors have recognised that difference in confidence and allow for it.”

Recently a Sunday Times analysis of 35,700 senior jobs at 33 financial institutions including Scottish Widows, Rothschild and Barclays, found that each had less than 10% of the top posts filled by women.

Two of them, Macquarie and Mizuho, have no women at board level or the equivalent.

Even millennials such as Kerry Battiscombe, an associate director at private equity firm Endless, have noticed the gender disparity, but she believes it is only a matter of time before things level out in the financial services.

“The financial services are male-dominated towards the senior end, but ambition is no longer considered a purely male trait, and the attributes that serve you well in senior roles aren’t necessarily what are traditionally considered male attributes,” she said.

“A lot of the men in senior positions come from a generation or two before us. Some women will drop off the career ladder because they make the decision to do so and start a family, but better work-life balances for everyone mean that this isn’t a necessity anymore.”

There is also a disparity within the financial sector itself, from speaking to a number of people in the financial services industry, private equity and corporate finance seems to be typically male-orientated, whilst insurance and client-facing banking is more equally balanced.

“The regional market has more mixed firms in terms of gender, though there are still male-dominated firms, but London investment banks have far to go,” said Debbie Mullen, head of large corporates and key clients at Barclays.

She added: “When I reached the head of the team I thought good grief, where are all the women? What happened? There are some women who have made it, but there aren’t enough.”

One factor put forward is a lack of confidence affects a woman’s ability – sometimes described as women needing to act like men – to be able to get ahead in the financial services, and in business in general.

Mullen said: “Women on the whole aren’t comfortable with self promotion. We’d rather get on with the job and then expect to be recognised without saying anything. We don’t do a lot of shouting about what we’ve done.”

As companies become more attuned to having a greater mix of personality types – the rise of the introvert being one example of how the concept of diversity is evolving to take in more than physical characteristics – they are seeing the benefits of avoiding the group-think that can come from having similar personality types.

“We should be concentrating on making the financial services a more attractive proposition. It has to be seen as a benefit to have women on the team.” said  Battiscombe, who specialises in transactional work, post-completion projects and portfolio management.

“It’s a virtuous cycle, having a woman on your team makes it more attractive to other women, which in turn diversifies the team, and at Endless, a diverse team is a credit to us, it’s something that differentiates us from our competitors.

“The financial sector does have a male-biased image, the same as engineering and manufacturing. If there is this perception then we need to do something about it.”

The perceptions of gender bias can also be a consequence of the individuals in the senior management team, which is typically older and more male-orientated than the rest of the workforce.

Tracy at PwC said: “There is not a glass ceiling as such, there’s more a perception that there is because when prospective candidates look at people in leadership positions, they don’t see people like them as role models.

“There are challenges that everyone is facing in terms of all diversity. The ultimate aim is getting a balance of senior management that reflects broader society; if people can see others in top roles who are similar to them, it’s easier to aspire to those positions.“

“It is a time thing, it won’t just correct itself unless organisations change.”

There are those organisations who seek to change often-unconscious behaviour. Barclays, for example, put directors through bias training and have a female on every interview panel.

However, this isn’t a quota situation according to Barclays’ Debbie Mullen. “It’s not about promoting women at any cost,” she said. “It’s about who the best person for the job is, and we’ve got to make sure in conversations we don’t lose sight of it, but we don’t want people saying ‘you only got there because you’re a woman’.

“It’s a fine balance but we have to get it right.”