This was one of the articles that a female reader {I would believe} has sent to http://news.hereisthecity.com which has got published. This was so brilliant and so apt for the Investment Banking Industry that I couldn’t help but share it across:
‘We all know that women generally don’t earn as much as men working in the investment banking business. We all appreciate that they don’t generally tend to move through organisations quickly and take up leadership positions. Hell, although an Indian native male runs Citi (Vikram Pandit) and a black American man was at the helm of Merrill Lynch for years (Stan O’Neal), there hasn’t been one single female head of a Wall Street firm. And with good reason.
Women, of course, don’t possess the character traits required to be a success in the financial markets. We are not unscrupulous enough. Unlike men, we are too straightforward, and tend to find it difficult to deflect criticism on others and dissemble when we find ourselves in a tight corner. We are tough and strong, but just not in the right way. We are flexible and pragmatic, which others tend to see as a weakness. We are happy to consider the views of others, but can be viewed as easily-influenced. We are thoughtful and like to consider a problem from a number of different angles, rather than jumping in like our male counterparts and staying the course dogmatically no matter what the outcome.
We are better organisers than men, are more diligent and possess a greater attention to detail. In short, we are everything that those who work in investment banking hold in low esteem. We are dismissed as clerks, written-off as support staff and given little opportunity to prove that we can mix it as well (and better) with the males in our working lives.
Managing our members of staff by leading by example and motivating the individuals in our charge to perform more effectively, we go about our duties in a low-key manner. Not for us the shouting and posturing which often characterises the management style of male peers. We don’t rule by fear and propagate a climate in which alternative viewpoints aren’t encouraged and constructive feedback is dismissed and derided. Of course, us females are just not macho enough to get to the very top.
A few of us, however, do come near the pinnacle. Zoe Cruz made President at Morgan Stanley and Sallie Krawcheck and Erin Callan were appointed as Chief Financial Officers at Citigroup and Lehman Brothers respectively. All three were elbowed aside, however (fired or effectively demoted), at the earliest opportunity.
Investment banking is a nasty, self-serving, dog-eat-dog business, and only nasty, self-serving callous people make it to the very top. And that’s the main reason women don’t get there. We’re too respectful, too consultative and too damn decent to climb the ladder by back-stabbing our way up. If it were legal, I’d like to form a women-only investment bank – just to prove that our male-dominated, boys-club industry has got it so wrong. In quick time, we’d have the best staff, the best managers and, before too long, all the best clients as well. In the meantime, we’ll just have to hope that one of the firms sees sense and appoints a woman CEO. I won’t be holding my breath though, as I think us women are in for a long wait before one of our number claws her way to the very top’.
Brilliant wasn’t it? I would wait for your comments on this one, before I post mine.
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