By Rebecca Christie

Non-resident fellow, Bruegel, and Europe columnist for Reuters Breakingviews

Working in finance can be extremely interesting and fulfilling, and many people are drawn to it as a good career that can support a family. Working on the policy side further provides the opportunity to contribute to public service. There are a lot of good reasons to get involved. But is the experience of working in finance the same for women as it is for men? The answer, it seems, is no. The ‘culture squeeze’ is real, and women in finance frequently find it a hard and challenging environment.

Seen and not seen

Presenting as female in the financial sector means being visible and marginalized at the same time. On the one hand, you are probably in the minority, so inevitably you stand out. On the other hand, your talents are not always part of first impressions. People may think you’re the assistant. Or that you’re inexperienced. You have to constantly prove your right to be there, which in turn can lead people to comment that you’re being pushy. Prove yourself again, and again, and again, and do it right every time.

This double reality is at the heart of what it means to be a woman working in banking, capital markets and financial regulation. The sector has made great strides, especially in Europe and especially in policy. Past and present regulators like Mairead McGuinness, Elke König and Sabine Lautenschläger have shown that qualified women exist and are getting top jobs. But every picture of European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde in a sea of dark suits shows that equality of opportunity is not a given, and that outliers may create a false sense of advance.

Research shows that people consistently overestimate how much time women spend talking and how prominent their voices are in a conversation. History podcast host Tracy V. Wilson reports getting “why do you only feature women” complaints as soon as the percentage of episodes in question hits about 25%. In a 2015 study, top business leaders vastly overestimated the number of women chief executive officers, guessing they made up more than 20% of the total when the real number is more like 8%.

Volume matters. Studies have shown that you need at least three women on a typical corporate board of 11 to 20 people for those women to feel comfortable participating and offering a full range of opinion. That baseline is just a step on the path to full parity, however. Three women out of 20 means there are 17 men at the same meeting, some of whom may take being in the majority for granted. It’s not a pipeline problem so much as an accumulation of process failures that keep women and minority candidates from winning the most promising positions.

Visibility labyrinth

The challenge for women is to develop talents and expertise while also navigating the visibility labyrinth. How much to speak up? If you get repeatedly interrupted and complain, how do you handle it when the same person who cut you off says it’s because of something you should have done differently, not because of any kind of pattern. We know the patterns are there, we have data to prove it, yet in any given instance the industry instinct is to assume good intentions that explain away whatever just happened as an outlier. For Black women and other minority groups, the scale of the problem magnifies. Even seeing the issue is hard, and figuring out what to do about it is more difficult still.

Change is coming, just slowly. At European financial services companies, women account for just over 40 % of board seats despite making up half of the appointments made at that level in 2022, according to a study from EY. In the field of economics, professional organizations are making belated efforts to stamp out a culture of discrimination and harassment. Women are getting opportunities to take top corporate jobs, even if they are more likely than male counterparts to face the “glass cliff” of taking over during riskier than normal conditions.  

It's important to acknowledge these challenges, to sit with them amid everything else going on. It does not mean it’s hopeless. Things are getting better, and the world needs the financial sector to be as diverse and ethical as possible for banking and markets to serve society as they should. When a diverse group of people is involved in designing a system, it’s more likely to come up with products that meet their needs, whether via improved lending protocols, better designed voice and touch recognition, or better customer service.

Simply by doing our jobs, women in finance make the point that good ideas can come from many corners. Financial stability depends on looking at the system from all angles, and taking the time to get it right.

Rebecca Christie is a non-resident fellow at Brussels-based economic policy think tank Bruegel, and Europe columnist for Reuters Breakingviews