While there have been improvements to hiring of women in financial services, the next issue to tackle is how to retain them.
Research by the Financial Services Council (FSC) found women had up 27% of investment teams, an increase of 2% on the previous year, and were particularly underrepresented in fund management and asset management.
On a webinar following the research, Yolanda Beattie, founder of Future IM/Pact said the next hurdle was regarding retention of women in the industry and was an area her organisation was working on.
“We are expanding the brand to look at retention, an industry-wide program to tackle promotion and retention of women.
“We need to use every opportunity to find talent, to retain that talent and to drive outcomes that achieve a gender balance.”
Camilla Love, founder of F3 Future Females in Finance, said graduates often opted for roles in banking, investment banking and consultancy rather than asset or fund management.
“There aren’t enough graduate programmes available [outside of these fields], there is not enough awareness of it. They join the Big Four banks, for example, and then there is a lot of retention incentives for students so they stay where they are.”
Beattie added the industry may initially attract students or younger staff but then women struggled to see how the role could fit in their lives as they got older.
“There is still bias in the system, people don’t see how they can thrive in this industry when they have kids, there is not the flexibility or culture that they can ‘make it work’.
“Firms should help women to understand how to navigate that journey and give them a mentor who can help them to build a strategy especially if they want to have kids.”
This was echoed by Love who said she had questioned how she could return to full-time work after havin
yeh women are the only ones who have child rearing responsibilities. Nevertheless, that “your” children thriving should actually be the primary focus in your life, not your career. These cl@wns creating problems so they create an industry for themselves to “solve” are creating a generation of neglected children promoting the premise women are worthless having a primary focus on the home. Pity any young boy born today though. Bricklaying will be your only choice.