Thank you to Benn and Noah. Far too many of us still recognize too much of this from year after year. I hope many others also found other things to do and be productive - but 50% of the best and brightest shouldn’t have to give up or go looking!
This piece is blinkered by ignoring what are, by far, the largest source of attrition for talented women in finance: having kids and choosing to be their primary caregiver.
We would solve for this by creating robust part-time job opportunities for women with young kids that they can pick up 5 or 7 years after they quit full time work, and welcoming them back to full-time roles after they've been out of the (full time) workforce 15+ years. But this (basically) does not exist, at least yet.
The suburbs of New York and Boston are FULL of ridiculously smart women who tore it up as bankers, traders and analysts for 5-10 years and would love to be back if there were a viable path for it. It's a ridiculous squandering of a tremendous resource.
Started on a trading floor at GS in 1993. Worked at two other major banks for decade+. Have been on several trading floors of other banks/brokers and HFs. Never once in my life heard a female trader being told to 'tone it down,' or 'be less aggressive.'
I knew women in The City who were all hired because they were damn good and made the banks lots of money. Today things are different with the me too movement meaning men don't want to hire a potential lawsuit on legs. Then there is the collapse of education which today is, except for STEM, a matter of accreditation and indoctrination and not learning. The last conversation I had with someone in The City he had been working on quantum computers and got hired by a bank because he actually understands things rather than spouting some nonsense about oppression or queer theory. Feminism has done this to women and now they complain about it.
Published a paper on this in the Journal of Investment Management: “Where the Boys Are”. Showed (a) fewer than 15% of decision makers in equities were women; (b) The proportion declines to 8% as responsibilities rise to C-level; (c) Not a function of performance, or job turnover. Some evidence that women are more heavily represented in lower risk areas (index and enhanced index).
The industry will never get past its sexism unless it also confronts its nepotism, as illustrated by "the firm had an intern whose father happened to be a top private equity founder."
However, I am suspicious of someone who starts off by misrepresenting stats and taking them out of context to support their view.
The fact is that women make up a minority of finance and STEM undergrads and grads (including MBAs). If this was not true, I don’t believe the writer’s firm could be 97/3 male without being full of misogynists. Oh wait - maybe the writer is right and it is all the other firms’ faults?
That Stanford MBA has gender balance is a reflection of their policy and the program’s perceived strengths - says zero about those concentrating in finance at the top 30-50 MBA programs globally. I have a family member who is a dean of admissions at a finance-heavy top tier MBA program and they must focus mightily to balance their intake and diversify enrollees. Competition is extremely fierce and it is not just about accepting more of these students but encouraging or paying them to enroll (as they are accepted everywhere). Stanford MBA runs a very good “scholarship” program - it has been in the news.
Stanford MBA is generally not where you go for hedge fund and IB trading. People more often go to Stanford to work in tech and consulting.
Just as the top undergrad schools aim for gender balance despite there being more qualified women HS grads than men, the very top engineering and MBA schools aim for gender balance by over-admitting women relative to their proportions in the qualified pool .
I was an MD in sales and trading for 25 years at both top 5 and second tier IB and universal banks, have recruited many scores of grads onto my teams, participated in university recruitment around the world, and have mentored/sponsored half a dozen women that made it to MD level. I know the stats very well. There are fewer women in the potential quant and finance pool- fact. There are fewer women drawn to risk taking as a career (even women better suited to it than many men who ARE interested) - fact. More women than men leave the workforce in their 30’s - fact. As the writer points out, that we need to make the industry more woman-friendly is also a fact. Most big firms have done a good job of this over the past 10-15 years. Ensuring a diverse recruitment pool has been part of my performance metrics since 2005 (until I switched to a non-top firm).
Obviously we should also bend over backwards to expose women to risk taking jobs and to seek out women who have left the workforce and want to return. This involves changing how we structure roles and rotational training in addition to ensuring that the working conditions are professional and supportive.
The current environment is so much better than the 80s and 90s, that is for sure (at least at the larger firms). Strangely, I can think of as many women from back then who were great traders and real innovators as there are now (proportionally - the industry much bigger now). Part of the problem is that those women I am thinking of were not the Stanford MBA type (though intelligent enough to be one), and if a colleague ever made a joke about sleeping with them, he would either be taken down verbally or would be walking funny for a week afterwards. The old days were horrific in many ways but were also diverse in a different way- the teams were not full of coddled, conformist rich kids from top schools, but with people from all walks of life subject to very harsh up or out environments. To take a bit of that old approach, diversify it for race and gender and in a more professional environment might pay dividends.
Having men and women work together is unusual in human history. Typically, there were strong presumptive sex roles due to transferring risks away from child rearing. Also, we are a quite cognitively dimorphic species. While none of this excuses bad behaviour, it does raise questions about how soluble some of these issues are.
My brother interned at Goldman Sachs. He said that the female interns were systematically pushed into sales positions and away from trading (presumably on the theory that pretty young women are especially good at getting male clients' attention) and that the illegal practice probably continued because it wasn't worth it for anyone to try to sue over.
Compelling stuff. I look forward to the day when the question of whether men or women are/could be better at funds management is no longer on the agenda, and we focus purely on individual performance in an ungendered way.....
In business school, I had a female part-time professor who was an executive in her fifties. She thought the number one factor leading to the insidious golf course was... the wives of the guys. If it's "just the guys" on the golf course, no need to worry about your husband being a scoundrel. To deny this very human fact of social relations is to miss a big part of what goes on in workplaces.
Obviously sexual harassment is not caused by anyone's wife, and I am sure there is no shortage of Old Boy's Club going on in highfalutin professions. But "Patriarchy Bad" is a one-sided analysis.
This is not exclusive to the finance industry. Posts such as this one are necessary need to be reflected on.
Does _anyone_ who actually works for a living still believe this dross?
Thorough and excellent -- thank you Noah and thank you Benn!
Thank you to Benn and Noah. Far too many of us still recognize too much of this from year after year. I hope many others also found other things to do and be productive - but 50% of the best and brightest shouldn’t have to give up or go looking!
This piece is blinkered by ignoring what are, by far, the largest source of attrition for talented women in finance: having kids and choosing to be their primary caregiver.
We would solve for this by creating robust part-time job opportunities for women with young kids that they can pick up 5 or 7 years after they quit full time work, and welcoming them back to full-time roles after they've been out of the (full time) workforce 15+ years. But this (basically) does not exist, at least yet.
The suburbs of New York and Boston are FULL of ridiculously smart women who tore it up as bankers, traders and analysts for 5-10 years and would love to be back if there were a viable path for it. It's a ridiculous squandering of a tremendous resource.
Started on a trading floor at GS in 1993. Worked at two other major banks for decade+. Have been on several trading floors of other banks/brokers and HFs. Never once in my life heard a female trader being told to 'tone it down,' or 'be less aggressive.'
I knew women in The City who were all hired because they were damn good and made the banks lots of money. Today things are different with the me too movement meaning men don't want to hire a potential lawsuit on legs. Then there is the collapse of education which today is, except for STEM, a matter of accreditation and indoctrination and not learning. The last conversation I had with someone in The City he had been working on quantum computers and got hired by a bank because he actually understands things rather than spouting some nonsense about oppression or queer theory. Feminism has done this to women and now they complain about it.
Published a paper on this in the Journal of Investment Management: “Where the Boys Are”. Showed (a) fewer than 15% of decision makers in equities were women; (b) The proportion declines to 8% as responsibilities rise to C-level; (c) Not a function of performance, or job turnover. Some evidence that women are more heavily represented in lower risk areas (index and enhanced index).
The industry will never get past its sexism unless it also confronts its nepotism, as illustrated by "the firm had an intern whose father happened to be a top private equity founder."
Just "happened to be", eh?
Makes some very good points.
However, I am suspicious of someone who starts off by misrepresenting stats and taking them out of context to support their view.
The fact is that women make up a minority of finance and STEM undergrads and grads (including MBAs). If this was not true, I don’t believe the writer’s firm could be 97/3 male without being full of misogynists. Oh wait - maybe the writer is right and it is all the other firms’ faults?
That Stanford MBA has gender balance is a reflection of their policy and the program’s perceived strengths - says zero about those concentrating in finance at the top 30-50 MBA programs globally. I have a family member who is a dean of admissions at a finance-heavy top tier MBA program and they must focus mightily to balance their intake and diversify enrollees. Competition is extremely fierce and it is not just about accepting more of these students but encouraging or paying them to enroll (as they are accepted everywhere). Stanford MBA runs a very good “scholarship” program - it has been in the news.
Stanford MBA is generally not where you go for hedge fund and IB trading. People more often go to Stanford to work in tech and consulting.
Just as the top undergrad schools aim for gender balance despite there being more qualified women HS grads than men, the very top engineering and MBA schools aim for gender balance by over-admitting women relative to their proportions in the qualified pool .
I was an MD in sales and trading for 25 years at both top 5 and second tier IB and universal banks, have recruited many scores of grads onto my teams, participated in university recruitment around the world, and have mentored/sponsored half a dozen women that made it to MD level. I know the stats very well. There are fewer women in the potential quant and finance pool- fact. There are fewer women drawn to risk taking as a career (even women better suited to it than many men who ARE interested) - fact. More women than men leave the workforce in their 30’s - fact. As the writer points out, that we need to make the industry more woman-friendly is also a fact. Most big firms have done a good job of this over the past 10-15 years. Ensuring a diverse recruitment pool has been part of my performance metrics since 2005 (until I switched to a non-top firm).
Obviously we should also bend over backwards to expose women to risk taking jobs and to seek out women who have left the workforce and want to return. This involves changing how we structure roles and rotational training in addition to ensuring that the working conditions are professional and supportive.
The current environment is so much better than the 80s and 90s, that is for sure (at least at the larger firms). Strangely, I can think of as many women from back then who were great traders and real innovators as there are now (proportionally - the industry much bigger now). Part of the problem is that those women I am thinking of were not the Stanford MBA type (though intelligent enough to be one), and if a colleague ever made a joke about sleeping with them, he would either be taken down verbally or would be walking funny for a week afterwards. The old days were horrific in many ways but were also diverse in a different way- the teams were not full of coddled, conformist rich kids from top schools, but with people from all walks of life subject to very harsh up or out environments. To take a bit of that old approach, diversify it for race and gender and in a more professional environment might pay dividends.
Having men and women work together is unusual in human history. Typically, there were strong presumptive sex roles due to transferring risks away from child rearing. Also, we are a quite cognitively dimorphic species. While none of this excuses bad behaviour, it does raise questions about how soluble some of these issues are.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jopy.12500
Can Noah or the author define what is a 'woman?'
My brother interned at Goldman Sachs. He said that the female interns were systematically pushed into sales positions and away from trading (presumably on the theory that pretty young women are especially good at getting male clients' attention) and that the illegal practice probably continued because it wasn't worth it for anyone to try to sue over.
Great post Benn! @Noah, please keep inviting Benn as these guest posts have been absolute bangers!
Compelling stuff. I look forward to the day when the question of whether men or women are/could be better at funds management is no longer on the agenda, and we focus purely on individual performance in an ungendered way.....
In business school, I had a female part-time professor who was an executive in her fifties. She thought the number one factor leading to the insidious golf course was... the wives of the guys. If it's "just the guys" on the golf course, no need to worry about your husband being a scoundrel. To deny this very human fact of social relations is to miss a big part of what goes on in workplaces.
Obviously sexual harassment is not caused by anyone's wife, and I am sure there is no shortage of Old Boy's Club going on in highfalutin professions. But "Patriarchy Bad" is a one-sided analysis.