Should we assume that finance is still a “man’s game”?

Photo from Herval's Flickr photostream.

by Jillian Hewitt

There’s been a lot of talk about men being more adversely affected by the economic recession than women, presumably because the kinds of jobs that are being cut are those in fields that are dominated by men (construction, for instance).  The NY Times ran an interesting article this week about one field where the opposite has happened—on Wall Street.  Women have always been extremely underrepresented in the financial world, but in the fifteen years before the economic meltdown they had made great strides.  Then the crisis hit, and it seems to have affected women more negatively than men.  According to finance executives, the shrinking number of women may be related to the industry’s increased reliance on trading, “a part of business that has been especially difficult for women to penetrate.”

Certainly, in the case of banking, there appears to be an interest gap between men and women; more women than ever are going to business school, for instance, but fewer are pursuing jobs in finance or accounting afterwards.  It’s possible that this “interest gap” has less to do with women’s interest in the actual job—the work itself—and more to do with the apparently intimidating “macho culture” that is so inextricably linked to jobs in sales and trading.  In this case and in so many cases, (for instance, the lack of women in leadership positions in the USG at Princeton) it’s difficult and perhaps impossible to tell where “cause” ends and “effect” begins. Are women just less interested in jobs in finance, or are they less interested because they’ve been historically shut out of the industry?  Do they not enjoy the work as much as men, or are they intimidated by a culture that relies on stereotypically “male” attributes?

I think sometimes it’s less productive to talk about things like this than it is to act on them.  I might not know why there are so few women on Wall Street, (and apparently neither does the NY Times), but I know a lot of women who are pursuing careers in finance.  I doubt that they’ve ever given a second thought to the fact that it’s mostly considered a “man’s game.”  And maybe they shouldn’t.  They’re capable, hard-working, sociable, brilliant women who have ambition.  What more could a feminist ask for?