Be it the pavements of Wall Street or the corridors of large banks, women are a rare sight in the world of finance. Some say it is because women are bad at mathematics, some put it on their risk averse nature. Some also put it to women’s childcare related breaks and also, inability to work from ‘dusk to dawn’ like men.
Maybe these baseless assumptions were theoretically correct till the 1980s, when women were only working as mere secretaries in the banking ecosystem. But as more and more women entered in this complex world driven by insights and instincts, the risks and returns have exponentially increased. In the new millennium, this got further clear as some of the leading banks have women at their helm. The trend was even more predominant in emerging countries like India where currently 7 top banks are head by women and top executives abound in discussion rooms.
Arundhati Bhattacharya, the chairman of State Bank of India, India’s largest bank has broken a lot of stereotypes in a male dominated society. Since her promotion 3 years ago, there has been 85% increase in women probationary officers in SBI
But despite all of the above, the women comprise less than 20% in the banking industry. The salaries of the fairer sex is significantly low compared to their male counterparts. There are frequent stories of women banking brasses stepping down. Front face roles like relationship management are still dominated by men while most of the banking women are in clerical, accounting and support functions. Banking office culture is highly sexist, right from men dominated ‘friendly banter’ to ungodly working hours. All of this also reflects on the priorities of the bank, leading to very few banks catering to women customers.
Things are definitely improving: both in the banking workforce and the women customers’ access. I think the below statement by Jayne-Anne Gadhia, the chief executive of Virgin Money sums up what we at Brazen Banker think.
…that we should not be interfering in the way financial services companies run their businesses, but we should be encouraging them to think about how they run them more fairly in terms of gender balance and ultimately diversity balance.
BRAZEN BANKER 
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