For & Against: The financial services industry is sexist

For: Jane King is a mortgage adviser at Ash-Ridge Private Finance

When I was asked to write this article, I was told that a guy would also be writing a piece and that he intended to be “forthright”.  

This struck me as a typical reaction when the words “female discrimination” is mentioned. We are a gender that ordinarily prefers not have to shout to be heard, but sometimes it feels like it is the only way to make any sort of impact in this still male-dominated industry.

I have been incredibly lucky in that I forged my career in a small business environment where I received mainly encouragement – perhaps we are more valued here – and so avoided most of the problems many women encounter in large, corporate firms, where men of a certain vintage hold views that are now almost certainly out of date.

I have encountered such men on the seminar circuit who have said to me that women “don’t really do numbers”.

I recall being asked by one fund manager to “put the kettle on and get me a biscuit” when he popped into the office for a meeting with a colleague.Jane King

I have also been told that women are fine doing “nice family things” like long-term care/school fees planning and a bit of life cover, but should be kept well away from the business of investing, on the basis this is really a job for a man, as women “don’t really understand the concept of risk and asset allocation”.

I recall being asked by one fund manager to “put the kettle on and get me a biscuit” when he popped into the office for a meeting with a colleague.

When I decided that I wanted to specialise in mortgages and property finance, I remember getting a call from a well-known broadcaster asking me to do a guest slot as “the diversity unit had told them they were a bit short on women experts and needed to bolster the numbers”.  

Of course now, any obvious form of sexual discrimination is frowned upon, but the sexist comment will continue under the euphemism of “banter”, a now well-used term that covers just about anything.

I like a joke as much as anyone and fortunately I am not easily offended, but there are women out there who find this incredibly offensive and upsetting and they should not have to suffer it.

We don’t want any special treatment, just to be treated as equals and to have our ideas heard and treated seriously, and to be encouraged to be as good as we can be.

We have lots to offer and surely, we are all on the same side. We need to encourage more women into the financial services industry and I am amazed that I am still in a minority of about one in 10 when I attend any networking functions or seminars.

If we can prove that we have gender equality in our industry then hopefully we will attract bright young women – after all, the average age of an IFA is around 55 years old, so we need young people of both genders to fill the gaps left by retiring (mainly) gents, who hopefully will take their outdated views with them.

Against: Neil Liversidge is managing director of West Riding Personal Financial Solutions

I’ll start with a confession: at 16, being male helped me get my first job as a quotations clerk.

The manager wanted another man in the office, I learned afterward, because he felt “ganged up on” by the women under him.

As I was the only candidate to pass the set tests I was employed on the spot. It suited his agenda, which was undeniably sexist, and I was not complaining, but what of his female subordinates?

They, I soon discovered, were equally determined another woman should be employed. He got his way by pulling rank.  

Having failed to get their way they spent the next six months fault-picking to make my life a misery, hoping I would quit or be fired. They failed, I stuck it out and eventually they both quit.

Since then one of the best bosses, and the two absolute worst I have ever had – the last two who impelled me to set up my own business – have all been women (every cloud and all that).

The words ‘sexist’ and ‘sexism’ are now mere manifestations of unintelligent label-politics.Neil Liversidge

I have employed men and women. Once I had a male PA. Today my staff are all female.  

They were the best available when I was hiring. I do not expect the Order of Germaine Greer for that.

Equally I would not feel ashamed if, by the same criterion, I had ended up with an all-male staff.  

Had that been the case though, in today’s climate, I am sure that a certain inference would have been drawn.

In 38 years I have seen some deeply unpleasant behaviours.

I knew a female colleague who made herself vomit in her boss’s Jag when she realised the lift home he had promised her after an office night out involved a detour via his flat.  

I saw a male manager driven to a fatal heart attack by a female colleague’s deliberate undermining of him. I saw a young woman regularly reduced to tears by her two female line managers, because she got the male attention they might have gotten 20 years before.

Simplistically, such behaviour could be labelled sexist. I see it differently.

Rather, the perpetrators were bullies, spiteful and cruel individuals, all prepared to exploit and harm others for their own ends. 

I have seen sexism in financial services by men against women, by women against men and by women against other women.  

But have I seen women systematically discriminated against and paid less than men? No, I honestly have not, not even in the 1980s.

The words ‘sexist’ and ‘sexism’ are now mere manifestations of unintelligent label-politics.  

The availability of a pejorative label for bad behaviour can be helpful to some causes, but when it encompasses so wide and complex a spectrum of individual behaviours, from the harmful and criminal to the harmless and trivial, it does a worthy cause a lot more harm than good.