Despite news that a samurai sword-wielding British woman has been named an elite on Wall Street, women are still talking about their struggles for a toehold in the financial industry.
Shahnaz Hussain, 30, who was listed by America’s Trader Monthly magazine as one of 30 leading young guns on Wall Street, is one of only two women to make the list dominated by men.
Many women have staked high-profile claims as rainmakers on Wall Street. But they say numerous factors, from sexual discrimination to a lack of interest from recent graduates, has kept their numbers frustratingly low, leaving one of the industry’s best assets just partly tapped.
Half of the students at law and medical schools are women, but at U.S. business schools their numbers hover around only 30 percent and in this country the numbers are even lower. That translates into a thinner pipeline of women heading into investment banking, private equity and other financial careers.
‘I wish there were more women coming up,’ says Suzanne Nora Johnson, Goldman Sachs’ co-vice chairman. ‘There’s no reason why at the entry level, it shouldn’t be at 50 percent across the board.’
Angie Long, who runs J.P. Morgan’s high yield and credit derivatives trading in New York, has been recruiting women to the bank since 1997. But she said that while women make up nearly half their sales division, the number of female trading recruits has risen only slightly.
Long, who herself is another woman to have made it into Trader Monthly magazine’s list of Top 100 Highest Earning traders, manages only one woman on her trading desk of 12.
Women cite a host of reasons for the lack of enthusiasm, from “men’s locker-room” attitudes to the infamous 90-hour work weeks that deplete their quality of life so greatly even high salaries can’t offset it.
Retention problems push the numbers even lower, as banks struggle to keep women who want a better balance between life and work.
‘It is frustrating when people drop out, and it’s very difficult to get back in,’ said Candace Browning, Merrill Lynch’s head of global securities research and economics.
The challenges don’t stop once women land the job – many suggest that they are then forced to assimilate into the hyper-masculine culture still prevalent on trading floors and in bullpens.
‘Men walk out of their frat house in college and into a bigger frat house,” said Ellen Schubert, who runs UBS’ global foreign exchange hedge fund business. ‘It’s hard for women to find natural mentors in a male-dominated business.’
For women who have reached Wall Street’s a-series, that apparently hasn’t been a big problem. They cited few if any instances in which they felt disadvantaged because of stereotypes about their sex.
‘The worst offensive elements of the ‘Old Boys’ Club’ have really diminished, meaning people being openly ridiculed or proactively excluded from things,’ Goldman’s Johnson said. And JPMorgan’s Long said that stereotypes haven’t hurt her career.
‘It’s not that it’s never an issue, but I don’t run into it very often,’ Long said. ‘I manage a desk of 12 junk bond traders, which is a market where you’d expect it to be an issue — but it hasn’t affected me.’
Further down the corporate ladder, that sentiment shifts.
Sexual discrimination and harassment suits, which have been around for decades, continue to crop up. Legions of men still visit strip clubs with clients and take all-male golf or gambling outings.
Top executives stressed that when faced with harassment or discrimination, women need to step forward. Goldman’s Johnson said the firm has an external ombudsman to address such problems. And while it may not be widely publicised, most other firms have similar structures in place.
No Comments on this post