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If you’re a quant and you’re a woman, the chances are that you are a) not among other women; b) not particularly content with your lot.
Research by P&D Quant recruitment, a quant recruitment firm, found that in a sample of 600 quants in London, only 43 were women.
Those women emerged as notably less pleased than men. Hence, 11% of female quants in the City said they were “very unhappy” versus 7% of men. Only 2% said they were “very happy”, versus another 7% of men.
Dominic Connor, director of P&D, volunteers an opinion on women quant’s sparseness and lack of contentment.
“Women are less likely to have PhDs,” he informs us. “They’re also less likely to have computer skills and anecdotally they’re less likely to enjoy programming than men.”
There are fewer female quants in London than globally (in a sample of 2,497 quants around the world, 8.3% were women). Connor postulates that this might have something to do with the lower standard of education attained by British women.
Because of this, Connor surmises that female quants are less likely to be in “better jobs” and that this might be making them comparatively sad.
“In our other studies, we’ve found that staff in algorithmic trading, modelling and trading roles are much happier than those in risk and that no group anywhere is as unhappy as the average person in model validation,” says Connor.
In a survey aimed at those who visit wilmott dot com, a website designed for sexually inactive men who live with their parents, the results showing a lack of female’s is not particularly surprising.
In another study, it was discovered that Dominic Connor is in fact the most arrogant recruiter in the world.
Looking at the “upset people” in model validation point.
I would use a football analogy.
If you have trained to be a footballer your whole life, your greatest ambition would be to play in the Champions league. However not everyone can play in the Champions league because while they may have the skills, they are not fast enough or fit enough. These footballers ply their trade at a lower standard, still making good money and dreaming of playing in the Champions league. It is not that they are particularly upset by their clubs but they just haven’t reached the dizzy heights they set out to reach.
Lets call Algo trading or quant modelling the Champions league. While most quants want to be there, not everyone can reach it. However all the people below is what ensures that the Champions league is possible i.e. model validation, risk modelling, IPV, etc.
11% of 43 female quants in the City, i.e. 4.73 women, are dissatisfied with their jobs… ah, the miracles of quant science.
Excellent survery…I bet 2% of 43 is a statistically significant number to base conclusions… :)
most of the london female quants are not british… in fact i don’t remember ever coming across a british female quant
Sarah …. you always come up with some random statistics, provide random comments AND rush to post an article on efinancial careers……………this article is really useless..all it says is that women dont like maths..I mean this is already a common knowledge why do you think LSE is full of hot chicks and Imperial is full of geek mathematicians (also sexually inactive)? hein?……i think you are definitely a good example of “the lower standard of education attained by British women. ” no harsh feeling!
@Anisk and notaquant – Yes, you are right, the happiness sample is small. It could have benefited from being larger.
@Researcher – Yes, you are right, I do not have a PhD. Nor was I aware that the LSE is full of hot chicks. You have found me out.
Who is Dominic Connor? He’s never headhunted me.
“Women are less likely to have PhDs,” he informs us. “They’re also less likely to have computer skills and anecdotally they’re less likely to enjoy programming than men.”
sign. Such a rubbish, you are just encourage the younger female generation going down to some conventional route.
How many times shall I say: THE WORLD IS CHANGING…..
@Lilian: I don’t think he is ‘encouraging’ anything. If that was the result, then that was the result. Of course the quantitative thing to do would be to question his sample (a small group of guys from Willmott). It could just be that Wilmlott is full of guys. The non-quantitative thing to do is imply that his statistics ‘discourage’ women and to assert that the ‘world is changing’ (a meaningless statement when you think about it).
@Quanty: Everyone b**ches about recruiters being fly by night idiots who don’t care about anything but pointy shoes and hair gel. But then you have Dominic, who is certainly not an idiot, who has industry experience, who bothers to get to know people and to screen them properly and who goes to the trouble of actually teaching quants technical skills and then you whinge about him too! Cut the guy some slack. I suspect that you are the arrogant one.
Yes, I’m not trying to “encourage” anything, I regularly give career counselling to women considering this line of work, but I’m very hardline on telling it like it is, so I’m not going to tell anyone they will enjoy something if I have reason to believe they won’t. Women get enough crap advice from schools who encourage them to do daft subjects as it is.
@Lilian, maybe the world is changing, but women are still vastly less likely to have good computer skills than men. I can’t fix that, only report what I see.
My sample is drawn from a very wide area, less than 40% from Wilmott, which is hardly a “macho” site. I’ve tried hard to get more female samples, but there just ain’t that many to be found, some people have expressed surprise that I’ve managed to find that many female quants in London, it was not easy.
Since then I’ve got some more data points and it hasn’t changed much.
It is quite possible that the low % of women is a result of the lower degree of happiness, but since I don’t have data on people who have left, I can’t say for certain.
@Quanty, yes of course I’m arrogant, have you only just worked that out ?
Others on this site realised this years ago, do try t
> …
Who can honestly think that it is feasible to measure such a complex thing as happiness with a questionnaire? Can you even trust people answer? How many people before committing suicide would answer that they are 100% perfectly fine?
To be precise, from my experience, it is quite the contrary many FO Quants who are under huge pressure from their traders to fix the never working systems secretly envy the freedom and independency of the model validation… more money doesn’t always buys you more happiness…
@ Dominic. Obviously compared to you, my programming skills are much less better. Well, I come from a Computer Science & Maths background and have been working as a developer since I started working in the City. I do have respect to you ( We actually have met each other and had a chat at one of the CQF extra lecture), maybe using myself as an example is just like claiming a “black swan” or “fat tail” phenomena?
It happens to me to develop some little maths algorithm or a pricer myself during the weekend ( ie, Copula CDO pricer) and I actually debugged the Monte Carlo simulation and tried to get a faster converging speed at Sunday evening – night. Of course, I am doing it not to compete with your program skills or IT passion. I just like it and feel proud of it.
Then you make me feel even more abnormal being a female in doing this ( coding a simulator over the weekend is already bit insane for man average speaking) .
Willmot.com is great site, I learn a lot from it ( ie, BaseCorrelation), I dont understand why ppl link sex with it? Is there any porn move download link?
It also reminds me of some primary teacher that I had. Regardless the fact that me and some other girls had 100% mark in maths, he always enjoyed criticizing and comparing the brain capacity between boys and girls.
ppl has such a believe in the conventional “Normal distribution” Theory and ignore evident fat tails!
Lilian I was of course talking about women as a subset of the population, some women are good at programming, my first programming teacher was in fact female before schools gave up teaching anything difficult in IT.
Statistically I’m vastly more abnormal than you are.
I’m one of those working class boys who qualified for free school meals who were vastly more likely to end up in jail than going to a decent university.
So you like programming, good and since you’ve heard me speak you will know that my contempt for those who fear programming is essentially unbounded.
As for Lilian bleating on about her primary teacher, that’s pitiful. I wasn’t allowed even to study some subjects because I was a working class boy.
Also, intelligence and mathematical ability do not follow a normal distribution, it’s nearer to a power law. Even though women on average score lower on both, that is irrelevant. a 6ft high women is just as tall as a 6ft man, regardless of her rarity ditto intelligence.
Note I didn’t say women weren’t *as good* at programming, it may be that they are, but there are too few data points to tell, though I’m pessimistic.
As a British female quant, I can say that my experience does not support what Connor is saying. It is true women make up a small minority of quants, but the women I have met do have phds and are proficient programmers who enjoy programming.
The composition by nationality is a reflection of the fact that London is a leading financial centre which attracts some of the finest quant finance professionals in the world, to say this reflects “a lower standard of education attained by British women” is an offensive generalization.
>>>”Women are less likely to have PhDs,” he informs us. “They’re also less likely to have computer skills and anecdotally they’re less likely to enjoy programming than men.”<<<
I can't agree with this. If you look at the incoming class of the M.S. in Computer Science programs at New York University or Columbia University, around 40% are all women. Strangely, they are almost all from Asian countries like China or India. All the female students I met from the M.S. in Financial Math degree program at NYU are Asian as well. I think because of the higher standards of math in secondary schools in Asia (compared to the U.S.), there is an attitude that math is easy for students coming from Chinese or Indian universities.