ISSUE FOUR • June 2018
/ Alumni
How Can More Women be Encouraged into Senior Finance Positions? Emilie Allaert
Whilst women hold just over half of all finance positions globally, the majority of these are junior level roles. Sadly, when it comes to career progression women are drastically under-represented in senior positions – occupying just one in four.
Though there has been slight progress in increasing the gender diversity at senior level, this has been slow. Numerous countries have taken the approach of imposing quotas on organisations to encourage the employment of female professionals at senior level in an attempt to narrow the gender gap. Though on the surface these quotas appear to be effective, they only offer a short-term solution and could have adverse effects. For example, it is likely that some women are only propelled into senior positions because of the need to meet a target, rather than in recognition of their work. Employing more women in senior positions can provide a win-win situation - improving the firm’s reputation, but more importantly acknowledging deserving, successful women by promoting them. But what effective, longterm methods (other than simply complying with government-imposed quotas) can be taken in order to help encourage greater diversity at the top levels of our financial institutions? Encourage women to be vocal about their successes When it comes to talking about personal successes, women typically are modest and see these successes as simply ‘doing their job’. However, their male counterparts are typically the opposite and are loud and
