UK
What is it about fund management and women?
7 November 2007
You’d never guess it from the book I Don’t Know How She Does It, but fund management appears to be a haven for the fairer sex.
While the fictional female fund manager in Allison Pearson’s book spends her evenings pummelling mince pies to make them appear home-made, her real-life counterparts are more likely to be found managing £100m mandates.
By our reckoning around a third of the women in Financial News’ ranking of the 100 most influential women in financial services are working in fund management, or closely related areas.
The comparable figure for fund managers of both sexes in the paper’s 2007 list of the 100 most influential people in financial services (of which a mere 5% were women) was around 15%. Many of the men worked in hedge funds and investment banking.
What is it that makes women congregate in investment management? Johanna Kyrklund, head of UK multi-asset at Schroders, and one of those on the list, says that for her it was all down to the focus on results and clients: “I like the fact that success is driven purely by your investment performance and that it’s about building long-term relationships with your investors.”
But Nicola Ralston, another woman on the list, questions whether fund management really is the bastion of female-friendliness that it appears to be: “I’m not that convinced there really are that many women in fund management – the same names come up again and again. If these names represent the tip of the iceberg, there isn’t much substance beneath the water.”
Given women might not be quite as plentiful as fund managers like to think, Ralston says the industry is in danger of becoming complacent: “It’s more a question that women are extremely under-represented in some areas and less under-represented in fund management.”
One of the areas in which they appear to be particularly thin on the ground is hedge funds. We found three hedge fund ladies on the Financial News’ women’s list. By comparison, the list of high flyers of both genders has at least 20 (or so) hedge funders – all men.
