Women in the financial services scrutinized more, mediocre men succeed

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 06/07/2021

Women in the financial services sector in the City of London struggle if they do not perform consistently well, while mediocre men are surviving in high numbers, according to new research by the London School of Economics (LSE) and Women in Banking and Finance (WIBF).

Researchers attribute this gender disparity to a number of reasons, including social norms, retention bias and a difficulty among women, especially Black women, to gain recognition on their performance at work. Furthermore, the report identified a tendency for managers to fake empathy when managing women, recognising that the trait was now seen as valuable.

To understand the headwinds and tailwinds that women experience when working in financial and professional services, the study undertook a listening tour with 44 women at various stages in their career. Of the 44 interviewees, 11 were Black women.

According to the researchers, women in the financial services industry are in a sink-or-swim position, while men have many more opportunities to survive.

This finding raises two problems for women. 

First, they are being held to higher standards – either ridiculed or celebrated, with fewer opportunities to drop the ball than men.

Second, it was emphasised that below average men often survived because they played ‘good politics,’ bringing this ethos into their management approach as gatekeepers to opportunities for emerging talent. It was said that emerging women were less likely to get opportunities under these leaders, and often had their progression blocked.

To tackle these challenges, WIBF and LSE have created the GOOD FINANCE framework to help bring inclusivity to financial services firms.

BLACK WOMEN FACING THE BIGGEST GAPS

Black women have been identified as the group within financial and professional services who fare the worst in terms of career progression.

The progress of Black women in the sector is unexplainably slow, and it is possible that there is an unconscious bias in the rollout of current initiatives or a barrier to access that has yet to be identified, researchers say.

Specific to the Black women interviewed, a theme of having experienced both high and low obstacles at various stages of their career emerged more clearly than for other women. What was striking, according to researchers, about the conversations was that the headwinds and tailwinds they faced were not different to the remaining 33 women. Rather the headwinds were more intense and the tailwinds fewer.

Of the Black women who emphasised the theme of ‘mediocre’ men (seven), three specifically mentioned the feeling that their performance level had to exceed both men and white women by a specific margin to get the same recognition. Two of these women suggested that the intersectionality between their race and gender caused this difference.

OTHER KEY OBSERVATIONS

The 44 interviews lead to a few other observations: 

• 10 women described experiences that would be classified as sexism, and five women described situations that would be classified as sexual harassment. Three and two of those women respectively experienced these situations within the last year.
• 14 women pointed to Human Resources as a bottleneck for change, underlining that when an issue is raised, the response from HR has been to ‘manage them away’ rather than deal with the issue. All women mentioned this as a lost opportunity for change and pointed to a need for a growth mindset to replace the fear of legal action.
• All 44 women were asked for their definition of equality in the sector as part of the interviews. While answers differed at the edges, 35 women landed on the need to equalise opportunities.
• Nine of the women interviewed highlighted a need to move beyond gender and think about issues of inclusion more broadly including social class, ableism, race and LGBTQ+ status.
• Five of the women interviewed mentioned that they were from working-class backgrounds and emphasised the tension they felt of not fitting in was more to do with their socio-economic background than their gender.

“Having the opportunities of talented women guarded by managers that favour people ‘like them’ and play bad politics is detrimental for financial services in terms of innovation.  The final gender convergence will only come when financial services have managers across all levels of seniority who embrace an inclusive leadership style that ensures the voices of all talent are heard because they are certain it is better for their own objectives,” said study lead Dr Grace Lordan, Director of The Inclusion Initiative at the London School of Economics and Political Science.