Interesting post about women in the finance industry

I don't understand why so many people seem surprised that if they choose to work part time they are seen as less than fully committed to their work and progression is difficult. I don't think that is necessarily sexist.

Because most women at my work, who have had babies recently, have come back part time, if at all - I keep being asked why I am not working compressed hours, if I really need to be full time.

The assumption is that a mother should want this, so a mother should not want progression. Nobody seems to question fathers who work full time.

As an ex-accountant who worked in corporate banking, I would say that 20-odd years ago it was very much a boy's club - new male employees were whisked off to the local stripper bars as an 'induction' and a hard drinking culture was everywhere. I was paid less than my male counterpart (until I complained) and had to fight for promotion - it was said (not in my hearing unfortunately) that there was no point in giving me the job because I would only go off and have babies - this when I was 25 and newly married with no desire to start family at all!

Fast forward ten years and most of those dinosaurs had been made redundant, my employers were marvellous on paper at equal ops, and largely great at following through. I was in a management position and in line for better things - then I had DD and was utterly sidelined. If I'd been able to afford a nanny and worked like my life wasn't my own, then yes, I would have been very successful (I have seen other, more career-focused women achieve great things in this manner, however they rarely seem to see their families).

Although the company was great at managing part-time lower grade employees, their structure was such that at my level you were being set up to fail - you couldn't tick the boxes on your appraisal unless you worked full time, you weren't given decent, challenging work to do for the same reason and it became a vicious circle. By the time they started offering redundancy I was only too happy to go, sick of juggling and doing a job meant for someone of a much lower grade because I couldn't apparently be given responsibility if I wasn't full time. I am not the only one this has happened to, they have lost many good female employees in middle management because they just didn't know what to do with part time staff of that grade.

There is always this issue of whether that comment by HH that had it been Lehman Sisters not brothers they would not have been in trouble is basically very very sexist a comment. Some women like power and money and to get to the top and achieve and do better than anyone else and take some risks (I do). Some women don't. I think we can get shunted into ghettoes if we allow generalisations that say women hate risk.

However I very much support the right of scientists to look for and examine gender differences and I do accept that there are some.

I have a child in banking in a sense and I don't think she nor I over 20 years ago had any discrimination applied to us but we both may so far have been lucky. I certainly think most women are better off considering banking to baking - see the women who earn £1k a day thread compared with will I be able to earn £10 if I sell 2 cupcakes type of business attempts of some women. They need to look where the money is if they don't want to spend 20 years on credit crunch threads learning how to darn socks on mumsnet to get by.

I thought it was a bit superficial tbh. It didn't go into why women might be more considered with regards to risk, nor of the experiences of women within banking. It also didn't extrapolate as to what type of women were in finance e.g. did they have families, did they behave as men or were other characteristics welcomed (other than a slight risk aversion).

I found the statement that women coming through that rights were now considered an entitlement a bit strange. Rights are an entitlement and I would imagine these rights were only things that men had felt entitled to (and recieved) for decades.