There has been much debate of late within the financial advice industry on the topic of gender quotas.
At Stanford Brown, we have a very clear view on gender quotas – they are immoral, demeaning to women, they act against the best interests of our clients and they are unconscionable.
Australia has some 24,000 financial advisers, of which only about 20 per cent are women. This is a completely unacceptable blight on our industry and we must all work to address this chronic imbalance.
But there is a right way to do this and a wrong way.
Quotas mean discrimination. It really is as simple as that. It means hiring people not on their merit, their work ethic or their customer focus. It means recruiting based on the lottery of genetics. Society has come a long, long way in repudiating discrimination and few civilised people would today countenance favouring people based on their gender, their sexuality, their ethnicity or their religion.
There is so much to dislike about gender quotas. Blatant discrimination is one but here are some additional reasons:
- Quotas tear at the fabric of an organisation’s culture.
“Is she here because she’s good or because we need to get our quota up?” You might not hear people actually say this, but you can be damn sure they’ll be thinking it.
- They also create doubt in the mind of the newly-hired female.
“Did I get this job because I’m a woman or because I’m outstanding?”, they may ask. For lovers of TV show Suits, remember the humiliation and anger Jessica Pearson, the black female head of the firm, felt when she discovered that she had been hired as a ‘diversity ticket’.
- It spectacularly fails the legal and moral obligations of all planners to put their clients’ best interests first.
“Hi Client, let me introduce you to Samantha. She’s not as good as our other advisers, but hey, the government forces us to get our gender numbers up. Sorry.”
- It demeans and patronises women.
“Sorry, ladies, but us progressive guys feel you need a helping hand. Here, have a job on us.”
- Quotas entrench class divisions
The already substantial privileges of privately educated girls (like my daughter) are often the beneficiaries of quotas, while boys of immigrant and poor families are discriminated against. Privileged girls from upper-middle-class backgrounds are taught how to play the system. The sons of recent migrants are not.
- Quotas can lead to humiliation and failure for women promoted and hired into jobs for which they are not qualified or yet ready.
Balance is essential for a thriving business and enables us all to better serve our clients. At Stanford Brown, we seek balance in ethnicity, in gender and in personality type. It makes for a far better work environment and is very much in the best interests of our clients. Financial advice businesses are more effective if they reflect the communities they serve. This goes for ethnicity as well as gender.
Rather than mandate by law who we can and cannot hire, let us all work together, starting at the level of schools and universities, to address the gender imbalance within the advice profession.
Programs like Alisdair Barr’s Grad Mentor and the AFA’s Female Adviser of the Year are the right way to bring about change. Let’s encourage more of these ideas and end this nonsense about quotas.
Jonathan Hoyle is the chief executive at Stanford Brown
Looks like the word has been circulated in the “women in finance” groups to come onto this site and vote down all the comments that don’t conform to their agenda.
Before reading the original story and the comments below, I never realised so many females in financial services were seething with rage and hell bent on revenge. Now we know what goes on in those AFA and FPA women’s groups. As a potential employer in a small and growing practice, it seems the safest way to avoid this PC minefield is to not employ any additional staff of either gender, but just to contract and outsource as much as possible.
totally disagree with the content and direction of this article. Gender quotas ARE necessary because if men are not forced to make changes, they won’t. And while there will always be detractors, those that think the negative of any kind of positive discrimination, will have that view regardless. My point in case regards hiring an attractive female in an office – old school, misogynist, women hating advocates will immediately denigrate this candidate on her looks and what she wears, no matter well qualified. This would happen quota or not. For mine (and I’m a male), bring the quotas in. Change will only occur when its pushed through, and even when its all done fair & square, there’ll be more than enough Y chromosomes decrying X chromosomes for simply being there. Get over it, women are 50% of the population and deserve to have equal representation FULL STOP.
rayt337 – the lack of depth of your counter arguments, in fact simply help the article author’s debate, so well done for confirming his stance as the more correct. Likewise, utilising CAPS to aim to add weight or emphasis to a point indicates an utter lack of ability of that point to be impactful on its own accord. Similarly infantile.
I don’t believe in discrimination as a principle. Whether that’s a group of people or an individual this is unacceptable. The notion of anyone studying hard, working hard and being passed over because of a quota system, job for a mate or whatever is quite simply discrimination
It is not fair that the birth rates puts males births at 105.9 per 100 females!
Someone has to tell GOD to even this quota out.
ifa your publication of this article is a joke. There is still significant disagreement over the effectiveness of quotas, and discussion about them has been long and nuanced. I believe they are a bit of a Band-Aid solution that does not really fix the underlying issues. But the basis of the arguments made by this person are completely ridiculous.
His assertion that ‘quotas [u]mean[/u] discrimination’ implies a belief that really, under it all, more men are recruited as FAs because they are better at the job and so quotas would unequivocally lead to more women (who do not have as much ‘merit’ as their male competitors) being hired. His statement (made without evidence) precludes the possibility that there are currently women who have precisely the same level of merit as a male counterpart in a job contest but who, for a myriad of reasons, end up being passed over at various stages of the hiring process. THIS is the issue that needs addressing.
While ‘society has come a long, long way in repudiating discrimination’ [u]explicitly[/u] we have actually still fallen well short of being able to tackle the many underlying implicit biases and decision-making heuristics which lead us (even against our stated commitments to diversity) to preference certain types of people over others (OR, conversely, to more heavily discount the attributes of other people). There is reams of evidence on this – I can recommend Moss-Racusin et al (2012) for a particularly delicious illustration, and the research done by Prof Madrian at Harvard, or Prof. Devine & William Cox at U Wisconsin-Madison. There may be disagreement about quotas but basing an argument on unequivocal statements without evidence does not contribute to the advancement of the broader issue the author says he cares so much about.
No matter, having any situation where someone is the most capable for the role, yet is not successful because of their gender, is sexual discrimination. It is actually against the laws of this country. Please go read the sexual discrimination act for your studies.
Yes Louise – but the Act is usually only enforced in instances where there is a clear action/policy /comment/omission etc that leads to a clearly defined direct or indirect outcome of discrimination based on your sex. Most of the discrimination noted by Faith above relates to those cases where the candidates may be pretty much equally qualified (which happens in many instances of hiring for a role) and it’s the way our minds are unconsciously wired that end up coming down on the side of one candidate over the other – leading to the more entrenched/ systemic issues we are still having trouble shaking off in a number of industries… The interviewer may be staunchly against discrimination but those norms/biases/personal experience that are hardwired into us can work to undermine even our explicit position on these issues. Legislation can’t fix that.
…and yet, here we are discussing it in an open forum, so clearly it has had some beneficial role. You appear well versed and articulate, why not pen that vaunted article yourself, with all necessary academic references?
As a female financial planning professional with 15 years in the industry I have seen a lot of progress made by women at all levels over this time. This has largely been accomplished through the enthusiasm and drive of fellow females who are hardworking and relentless in their pursuit of what is best for their clients. This is what is reducing the gender imbalance. Women who are just too good to go unnoticed. I know if I was vying for a position I would want to know that I received the position because I was the best person vying for it, not because an employer we looking for a female to fill their quota. I would suggest that being employed by an employer who required a quota to help with evening out gender inequality would be less than satisfying. Any truly progressive employer doesn’t need a quota and will just judge the person before them on their merits rather than looking at their gender. The talent coming through at a graduate level is outstanding. There is a new wave of confident and highly qualified young ladies that will be the future of the industry. I look forward to seeing them shine.
In the interests of disclosure, I do work for Stanford Brown, I am female and I hold a management position. We have female advisers and other females in management roles who all earned their place based in their talent. We all support each other and all our colleagues. The firm doesn’t need a quota to recognise who the best candidate is and it is for that reason that no one can question why anyone in the firm holds their position. I invite anyone who believes a quota is required by employers to make contact for a chat. We are always on the lookout for talent, whether you are male or female.
Sure, quotas might be “evil” in an imaginary meritocratic world – however when you consider the impenetrable barriers created by the financial planning industry’s highly mysogynistic “boys club”, they only tip the odds slightly. Mr Hoyle should ask himself “what is my purpose in writing this article?” is it to perpetuate stigmas against hiring women due to quotas? is it to propose better solutions? Does he have any evidence to support that women will suffer backlash and humiliation from being hired in this way (outside of fictional characters)? My understanding is that quotas work to provide equal OPPORTUNITY i.e. they will be given the opportunity to perform – not given bonus points for their work or promoted without being “qualified or yet ready” and suffer supposed humiliation. Can I also call out that point 6. is so incredibly ironic when you consider the pervasive advice often offered to men to believe in themselves and apply for roles slightly above their qualifications (the old fake it till you make it mantra) – yet here you are warning women of potential humiliation and failure! Jonathan, YOU are problem as you employ these commonplace attempts at dismantling efforts to balance out diversity – ofcourse there will be pitfalls, few solutions are perfect but if you truly believe that the environment needs to change then you would not be writing an article with such headlines “unconscionable”, “demeaning”… “evil”.. this is not proposing a solution, but demonising an approach. Are you really comfortable with the current work environment that your daughter will be a part of? Quotas are not the whole solution but they are likely a part of it, and articles like these continue to undermine efforts and stigmatise women as diversity tokens, quota or no quota.
Because the current meritocracy we all live in has so far yielded the best candidates – all of which were the absolute best fit for the job and best for the clients! It must be the responsibility of society and the educators to fix such imbalance, not us men of financial planning.
Search out Sam Mostyn’s views as expressed at the recent Super Women & Wealth summit where she [b]celebrated[/b] the fact that she became the first female AFL commissioner through a quota. She was selected on merit (don’t ever fall into the trap that merit is overlooked in a quota system) and has been able to bring real change and a new perspective to a traditionally male-dominated industry that was looking to engage more with a significant % of its member base. The only thing immoral and demeaning here is the implication that quotas inherently mean lower standards.
The industry is struggling to be taken seriously and then we see the ifa publish this piece of click bait. Most people still regard the industry as an old boys club tainted by a bunch of greedy, unscrupulous product floggers and articles like this don’t help paint it in a progressive light. If you disagree with government mandated quotas then provide some solutions, suggest what should be being done, give examples on how you have tackled it at your work instead of quoting television shows and giving sarcastic commentary. Let’s lift the tone of the debate and of what’s published in the financial press, that way, maybe, we’ll attract the right people (men and women) to help improve our industry.
Jonathan, I admit I once thought like you but this is old thinking. It is easy to think that that when a male interviews both male and female candidates, he will be totally objective in his decision making. People have a natural inclination to connect more to people that they can relate to. ie a male will often have more in common with another male and therefore subconsciously like them more. Natural discrimination (ie without meaning to be) is just human nature. Sometimes a male gets a job simply because he is male. Especially where there is a ‘chronic imbalance’ as you put it, women will mostly be interviewed by males so it makes correcting the imbalance far too slow. This is why quotas need to be strongly considered as part of the mix of actions.
Couldn’t agree more. It surprises me that there is such a fear of quotas because they will apparently result in under-qualified women filling roles that they don’t deserve. Quotas aren’t suggested to ensure that under-qualified women receive roles that should go to others ‘just to be equal’. Their whole purpose is to ensure that the more than qualified women receive the opportunity to be in roles that have been going to under-qualified men for decades, due to gender bias.
So many individuals are scared that ‘things won’t be fair!’ not realising that things haven’t been fair all along – just that up until now, it’s been in their favour.
This whole discussion smacks of some fabian socialist attempt to engineer the world – there are a whole host of reasons that women do not pursue some professions – but thats an argument for another day – explain to me how this would better serve the client – when “apparently” we have other issues to attend to – FOFA not the least of concerns. One thing is we should all have “equal opportunity” – and that does not mean equality of outcomes – that should be best competitive fit for the role with the – and not a sympathy vote for participating.
Mate, you miss the point. The currrent system is discriminatory, and no one can deny that the selection process in place has selected some dodgy advisers as well as good ones. I am certain other commenters can quote the studies on this. The industry has had decades to fix this. If quotas have to be introduced to stop the advising industry from appointing from their own homogenous and shallow pond, then the industry should have redressed this earlier. I personally think quotas is a last resort but if the industry keeps on ignoring suitable qualified women (and there are a lot of them out there) when mentoring people into the advising industry, when promoting, and when pushing people forward as spokespeople, then quotas will be necessary – and this will not be for appointing unqualified women, but to appoint the qualified women who have missed out because of historic faulty selection processes.
Trish Power
Superguide.com.au
What evidence do you have that the CURRENT system is discriminatory? Gender imbalances in the workplace may be evidence that the HISTORICAL system had discrimination. But surely the fact that gender imbalances are rapidly diminishing, is evidence that the discrimination which was commonplace in the past has largely disappeared. If there IS still lingering discrimination, then call it out specifically. But introducing a new system of discrimination to get your revenge on those people who discriminated against you in the past is immoral and unbecoming.
I think the jury is in regarding the bias of the current system. If the article is accurate and only 20% of financial advisers are women, that seems to point to discrimination or at least bias? Having a policy of boosting female numbers doesn’t mean you you have to settle for someone less qualified or inferior, it means looking for candidates where perhaps employers hadn’t looked before.
I’ve done a quick search of evidence of the bias or discrimination in the current system, could you provide some of your evidence that ” the discrimination which was commonplace in the past has largely disappeared”:
Thank you Jonathan, you are absolutely correct. Quotas do nothing more than create a larger rift between the genders and ostracize those who are employed for the exact reasons stated in your article. Women are dominating the financial planning degrees at uni and are getting roles in the industry. I’m sorry but if you’re not good enough you’re not getting the position regardless of gender or race.
Totally agree Chris, also with Jo’s comments
As a female adviser I totally agree with the opinions expressed. I am damn good at my job but if I were to apply for a position I would expect any future employer to choose the best candidate not the best gendered candidate. Would FP benefit from more female advisers – absolutely but do not put a number on it! With any position it should be the best person for the job and any employer who is not hiring females due to a discrimination will suffer ultimately because female advisers have a big place in any advisery firm.