 Panel Discussion Women in Power: Fostering the Current and Next Generation in Financial Services SATURDAY 13 OCTOBER 2007
Luring women into jobs in finance was one thing, and keeping them there was another, participants heard in a debate on fostering the next generation of female bankers. One of the biggest hindrances to attracting women was a lack of role models and lack of encouragement during their education to enter this high-earning but high-pressure career, participants were told. Patricia Barbizet, chief executive officer at France's Artemis investment company, said: "The good news is that women in finance is now a real issue. Those who are already in the career are taken seriously, they are significant, not just anecdotal. And now we find women in many different fields of expertise, like commerce, law, marketing and human resources.” She added: "Some years ago we could not appoint a woman because of fears of what the customer would say, but now the customer actually goes out of their way to ask for a woman." "But the bad news is that there are too few of us." The issue of women succeeding in financial institutions once they were working there was not as tricky as the problem of getting them to consider this field as a realistic career option in the first place, Barbizet explained. "For a woman to get to the top, she not only has to get through the lower and intermediary positions in a firm, she has to apply for a job there in the first place,” she explained. “At the start of their professions we see young women looking years down the line and asking themselves if that's what they really want. They weigh up the pressures of working life and family and ask themselves if they can make it all possible at the same time. "So we need to explain to young women in education now that the whole world is open to them, and that they can go into any profession they like, including private equity, investment banking and other areas of finance. If we encourage them, the rest will follow," she said. Deborah Hopkins, senior advisor and managing director at financial giant Citi, said the lack of women in senior positions was one of the main barriers to more young women entering into the financial world.. She said: "There is a problem of recruiting women into finance. Young women are bright and ready to do the job, but they don't go into it because there are not enough role models." Asked if women already working in banking struggled with the male-dominated office politics of the financial world, she hit back: "We're not worse than men at office politics, we just don't want to play. We're more direct. We find the whole political game offensive." Yuan Wang, training and education director at the China Development Bank, thanked Chairman Mao for the confidence women in China now had to enter high-pressure careers like finance. She told participants: "Mao's economic policy may not have been that good, but on the gender issue I give him credit. In China, women have the confidence to seek jobs in finance, and they have recognition once they get there. "And once female managers are in place, they out-perform their male counterparts, and that's because Chinese girls are clever. As students, they are quick and intelligent and find it easy to pass exams." But she said in China the problems of women leaving work to have a family was also an issue for companies, because women there were entitled to six months maternity leave with full pay, while men were allowed only two weeks. She added: "So this can sometimes leave us short of workers in the office.” She added: "It is vital that we don't just give female workers the technical skills to do their work, we must give them the career skills to help them with the development of their professional life.Young women in banks look for female role models among the senior managers, and we are duty bound it to pass our experience on to them." Some rules for professional success applied equally to men and women, she added, with one of the most important being networking. She said: "I once worked with a man who ensured that every day of his working life he spoke to three colleagues he hadn't spoken to in a long time, three clients he hadn't spoken to in a while and three old friends that he hadn't been in touch with recently. "So he made these nine phone calls every day, and the result was he was phenomenally successful." ______________________________ |