Comments on: Women desert Wall Street

By: y2kurtus

y2kurtus — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:26:53 +0000

I’ve got a much simpler explanation of the numbers in the chart. The numbers in the chart are wrong.

If I am reading the chart correctly it suggests that male employment in financial services has grown and that female employment in financial services has shrunk over 10years.

I would bet all that I own that female financial sector employment is greater today than 10 years ago.

By: Paine21

Paine21 — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:29:37 +0000

@BB1978 – THANK YOU! I wasn’t too surprised by the data you found. @pnishr: Your responses are full of frustration and aggravation. Male-bashing isn’t the issue here. If you work in a Wall Street firm and stand in the middle of the floor, look around and count the number of women v. men. Then consider each of those women and men in their comparable roles. Examine why you feel one person is better in that position than another. Women leave Wall Street because there is very little self-examination on the part of managers and executives regarding their choices for hiring and promotion. It is similar for other minorities as well. No one wants to be called sexist or racist, but an institution, through established hierarchies based on cronyism, will perpetuate the system that carries these flaws. If the creation of wealth was truly the bottom line for these firms, the corporate culture would truly reflect the best and the brightest. But as the derivatives mess has shown, the culture promotes the slickest. Someone should have said no before that got out of hand. But the dollar signs of easy money were too bright. Banks and investment firms are an important part of this nation’s, this world’s economy. If you want to call it male-bashing, go ahead, but a woman probably WOULD NOT have pulled that deal and thrown it on the table for 3 reasons: #1 – her male colleagues would have gutted her about the worth of deal and its inherent riskiness before swiping the idea out from under her and selling it themselves; #2 – derivatives swaps combined with the housing crisis would have made her uneasy; she would have seen the writing on the wall – deal goes bad, money lost and she’d be out the door, a convenient scapegoat; #3 – women ARE more risk averse because while a male colleague can make a mistake and survive it, a woman’s career would take the hit twice as hard – if she wasn’t fired, she would definitely have to either leave the company or find a new manager who would allow her to prove herself. In an overwhelmingly male environment, it is survival. Has anyone read “Whistling Vivaldi?”

By: hsvkitty

hsvkitty — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:37:17 +0000

Maybe it is because females recognize that the world of high finance can be about ego and coercion and once they get the bad taste in their mouths after being asked to cheat customers, lie and push risk onto unsuspecting clients while extracting huge bonuses for being corrupt they either want to do it their way (ethically) and start their own business or have other choices to pursue.

Or maybe she wasn’t allowed near that social circle even if she wanted to be. Maybe it is an aversion to financial crack? maybe someone asked her to sell some derivatives but couldn’t explain exactly what it was she was supposed to sell and told her to fudge it? Maybe she saw too many men making deals in strip clubs and over a line of cocaine? Maybe she wanted a life? And yes maybe she also wanted a baby and family.

I am still curious where the woman is who helped sell the abacus deal who was the liaison for Paulson and quit soon after… never to be heard from again. I think she is the proverbial fly on the wall.

By: wickii

wickii — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 09:59:53 +0000

Maybe women dont see Finance as worthy..and who could blame them.

By: NaughtyDevilz

NaughtyDevilz — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 07:16:15 +0000

Nice report…

@BB1978: I strongly support Ur observation its gurlz/women who smooth out the life’s ups n down in general,hopfully they can do same in other areas also. Lets give it a try… ♫♪♥

By: deLafayette

deLafayette — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 07:04:16 +0000

{I don’t find either of these theories particularly convincing. For one thing, have Wall Street back offices really thinned out since 2000? And were they particularly female-dominated back then?}

Spurious track, that.

As a male, perhaps you truly do NOT understand female preoccupations? Consider this key clue: “Women have this higher alternative value of how to spend their time” Does it give you a better insight into female priority values? No? Then you are hopeless.

The male gender achieves personal realization by means of his work, whether it be in business or sports. This is the principle means of establishing self-esteem. It is also the primogeniture of male pursuit of capital accumulation, since achievement is best expressed by the ostentation that riches afford us. Who wouldn’t like a Ferrari when the rest of us are driving Chevys?

The female gender is “programmed” since the dawn of time to nurture (the family, its children) and when a work environment becomes hostile by means of personal competition, milady opts out. Such does not correlate very tightly to her system of values and, indeed, many may feel that they “could be doing other, more enriching things with her life”.

What has more value to mankind — that megabuck bonus or a healthy and happy child?

By: Darkly37

Darkly37 — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 05:22:24 +0000

To say a woman cannot do it is offensive, but it is not offensive to say most women probably do not want to do it. The nature of that job just does not fit most women’s natural nurturing personality. Men tend to thrive in hostile or volitile businesses which boosts their testosterone and natural abilities.

This does not mean men are better at it, just we enjoy it more than women do. The fact that the market was doing so poorly is directly related to why women were leaving. The job didn’t have any benefit to women if they were not making money. Men on the other hand still get enjoyment from this particular job even if they are not making much money.

By: nicfulton

nicfulton — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 04:32:55 +0000

This is just a theory. But over the last decade Wall Street has certainly become more technology driven. Although this may be just moving the ‘shame’ over to another industry, there has been a lot of technology hiring on Wall Street and the computer industry has very bad gender imbalances. Could it be that we’re seeing this reflected in Wall Street?

By: misdelivery

misdelivery — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 04:21:40 +0000

Pressure cooker jobs will never be able to contain women. They are part of patriarchal institutions designed for and built by men. Its not in womens nature to take on these roles and besides, they want more time for LIFE. One day businesses are actually going to figure that out.

By: Buzz123

Buzz123 — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 02:58:53 +0000

Did occur to anyone that there are less women in these jobs because as a whole, they are undesirable, offer poor security, working conditions, and an uncertain future working in a house of cards which is so bankrupt it can come tumbling down at any moment?

The economy as we have known it is no more folks. Stop waiting for a report from the top to validate this.

Listen to our women. They know something.

By: UROrange

UROrange — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 01:50:20 +0000

I am a girl and I believe women should be hire based on talent.

If an industry hired women or a minority for the sake of balanced, then that just a lot of BS. You know that, they know that. No one will take you seriously.

By: pnishr

pnishr — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:58:39 +0000

I never said you were a woman…???

So, NOW the claim is that it is information from Scandanavian banks that supports your ridiculous claims. Interesting… so, now we’re comparing scandanavian banks against american banks and coming up with “conclusions” about results based on the gender of those in management, rather than the differences in the countries, norms, and regulations… Oh-Kay…

Well, that’s scientific…??? A comparison study with almost no constants.

Kudos to you for actually presenting a single fact (that of women generally being more risk-averse) that we pretty much all knew to begin with.

Some politicians have been saying for almost a decade that the assets held by fannie and freddie were unsafe. I guess your brother is behind the power-curve on that one.

Back up your claim that all the banks would be bankrupt without forced government intervention… (not that bankruptcy means the end of the business anyway, but a reset to reasonable values). You seem to like hyperbole there cowboy/girl. (“ALL of them” “diversity of opinion is always…”)

You’re clearly getting too emotionally involved in the argument, since you’ve now a) invented charges by me that you’re a woman. b) not even attempting to support your claims anymore. That was evident by your “whatever” comment.

Great argument. Can’t come up with facts, just say “whatever,” throw up your arms, and walk away. Like a teenager arguing over there curfew.

And now you’re drawing conclusions that research doesn’t support.

good job.

By: BB1978

BB1978 — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:46:36 +0000

pnisher: whatever. You don’t believe me? Fine. I suggest you go to all the publicly published quarterly results of the big banks and take a look at their profit statements for 2008. I never talked about ability, I commented on judgement, two different things. Second, how do you know I’m a woman? That’s right, you don’t. The financial industry is primarily run by men, that is a fact. In addition to that, the top management is also primarily run by men, that too is a fact. Frankly, they haven’t done such a bang up job lately. Would women have done things better? Evidence from scandanavian banks suggest maybe, as many of those banks have women in upper management. There are numerous studies that have shown, for good or bad, that women are more averse to taking risk, this research is pretty widespread look it up in google scholar. Having BOTH women and men in upper management is a good strategy for any business as a diversity of opinions is always better than group think. You can bash the government and politicians all you want, but the bottom line is if the geniuses on wall street, primarily men, had not taken such bone headed decisions the world economy would not be in the toilet. Finally, if the government had not bailed out the banks, ALL of them would be bankrupt. Try to use your creative imagination to figure out what the situation of the economy would have been then. My brother audits banks for a living and he told me months before the collapse that this was going to happen. Finally, data that is older than 2008 suggesting that companies with women in power have better earnings is not “bogus.” You clearly don’t understand how published research works. It takes almost 2 years to publish data, that is what is called a peer review process. Look it up.

By: TFF

TFF — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:21:48 +0000

In some cases (e.g. Wells Fargo) the healthy banks needed additional capital so that they could safely absorb the unhealthy banks.

I do agree, however, that the demonization of the banks has gone overboard. They aren’t any more to blame for the problem than the millions of people who bought more mortgage than they could afford.

By: pnishr

pnishr — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:16:16 +0000

Let’s also remember that the TARP money was PUSHED onto the top national banks, not asked for by them. If you took the time to pay attention to the Fed’s FOIA release regarding that, you’d see that it was part of the agenda of the Treasury (under Paulson at the time) and the Fed (Bernanke and Geithner) to allow the government to absorb much of their toxic assets. The Banks took the money because they were told to accept the money. Otherwise relatively healthy financial institutions were strong-armed into taking it.