UK
Hedge funds may be bastions of countercultural financiers who’ve quit the mainstream, but they’re not very female friendly.
A report released last week by headhunter Hanson Green found up to 50% of women working in fund management and hedge fund management said they’d come up against the ‘glass ceiling’.
The survey covered 30 senior women and found that those concerned blamed the long hours culture and male-orientated networking for curtailing career opportunities.
We probed a handful of women in the sector for their opinions. Few were willing to comment on the record, but Gay Huey Evans, president of multi-strategy hedge fund Tribeca Global Management (Europe), was bolder than most. Huey Evans told us: “In my early career it was more difficult to leave work to go home and tend to my daughter, despite returning to work later that evening. Attitudes towards flexible working are certainly improving.”
She went a little further in an interview with The Times and said women are seen as “witches”, whereas men are “just seen as aggressive.”
True or false? Are witches being thwarted by thugs? Add your comment and let us know what you think.
I don’t understand why anyone would take issue with mothers at work. It’s not like the men at work are more productive.
Male employees spend a significant amount of their working day watching major sporting events on the tv screens on the trading floor; recovering from a hangover in the morning or after a 2 hr boozy lunch; unselective and undiscerning about client entertainment; being having unproductive meetings where major objective seems to be discussing sport, cars or stroking each other’s egos.
Women (esp. mothers) typically cannot get away with watching Ftv or Lost or the latest Bond film on company time; or spend all morning sitting at the desk in a daze guzzling coffee because the baby was up all night; or having meetings dedicated to manicures & the latest chemical peel technology. As for client entertainment … there isn’t enough space here to enumerate the disadvantages women face.