International Women’s Day. A day that I have made no secret about supporting.
2018 will be my third year helping to put together an IWD event with the aim of bringing the advice industry together to celebrate and inspire.
But it is a day that can be polarising – particularly in financial services.
Each year I see many of the same issues debated in the comments sections of articles (and maybe this one will be no different):
“There’s no such thing as the gender wage gap.”
“People should be hired on merit only. I don’t believe in quotas.”
“Why do we have to celebrate women? We don’t have International Men’s Day!”
(Well, we do, it’s the 19th of November, but I digress).
If nothing else, the day invokes passion from individuals of all genders, many opinions and all walks of life. But unfortunately, sometimes in amongst all of this lively debate, what we could be doing as a community to push for progress, gets lost.
And perhaps more importantly, with so much focus on the fine print of feminism, it can become easy to forget that this movement was designed to encourage inclusion, support and above all – equality.
The Australian financial advice sector is still largely male dominated (similarly to many other sectors within financial services, including the sub-sector I’m a part of – financial planning tech).
While we often talk about striving as an industry to even up these numbers as well as the wages, I feel we don’t often agree on how.
Are there things we could all be doing better to make the advice community a more welcoming, fair place for women? Absolutely.
Could we be providing more pathways and avenues that encourage women to enter a career within financial planning? For sure.
And while we could all argue about the best ways to do this, I think regardless of our opinions, we’d find the most essential thing we should be striving for is to not allow ourselves to be an industry that is divided by the minutia of gender issues.
I believe (or at least I’d like to believe) that the majority of us are for gender equality and that although we have come a long way, there is still some work to be done when it comes to this.
We may not agree on the best way to get there, but regardless of our paths – the destination remains the same.
In start-up land, many great ideas and businesses fail before they even get off the ground because the founders can’t agree on some minor issues and they let this be their undoing, forgetting that they all have the same objectives for the business – to succeed!
I’d hate for this to happen within advice, especially when it comes to increasing the number of women in our industry.
This International Women’s Day – regardless if your female or male, I’d like to encourage you not to focus too much on the issues and ideals you disagree with.
But rather pick one thing, even if it’s relatively small, that you can do to make our community a more inviting, blossoming, equal opportunity place for both genders to work – together.
Naomi Christopher is senior manager, brand, at Midwinter
I don’t believe in discrimination of any form.
Equality of opportunity is a goal worthy of any capitalist or democratic society. Equality of outcome is a different matter.
Women have factors that they need to consider in living their life as do men. Like men they must choose what they are willing to do and what they are not willing to do. This trade off is the game of life. This is the individuals decision and they are able to do it on their terms it is not necessary for others (not matter how well meaning they think they are being) to interfer with that process. Why would you want to convince someone to work in finance when left to their own devices they may have chose a medical or “caring” occupation or even interupt a career to raise children? It is the womens choice but like all choices it has ramifications. I don’t see professions like nursing which are dominated by women actively acknowledging their gender issues.
If people, including women, want to work in finance and climb the ladder for fame and fortune they can. Just maybe some people think other things are more important….Its up to the individual.
It makes no difference if you are a girl or a boy if you are self employed.
Should FASEA adopt a more inclusive approach to make it easier for educated Woman with graduate qualifications to enter? This primarily could include making the entry requirements to become a financial planner in 2019, now confined to being a Bachelor of Financial Planning or a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Financial Planning, to include say broad Finance degrees for example just a Bachelor of Commerce Degree alone and/or plus say a AQF level 5 Diploma in Financial Planning, and or a AQF level 7/8Grad Cert in Financial Planning. My experience is that a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Financial Planning are not widely offered and tend to be via the metropolitan Universities solely .
I believe regional and country advisers are going to find it harder to encourage educated & degree qualified Females into the industry because FASEA just apopted the FPA’s FPEC list and this is limited to Universities who 1) paid to be on it and 2) have these courses. How is it we’ve come to the stage that you can be an accountant who studied a Bachelor of Economics, Finance or Business, and if you’ve studied a Bachelor of Commerce we’ve said you can’t be a Financial Planner. The University of Orange or Dubbo or Albury won’t have a Bachelor of Commerce course listed on FASEA and graduates will stop and think about twice about being planners.
You don’t pay for accreditation with FPEC. There is no University of Orange or Dubbo, but both places have Charles Sturt University. Since Charles Sturt have their online Masters on the FPEC list maybe they will get their online undergrad program on there too soon? Maybe the issue is there need to be more regional universities offering financial planning and applying to be on the FPEC list?
The University of Dubbo was an example only. So let’s use your proper Charles Sturt (CSU) as an example. I wonder how many 22 year old females would actually enroll in an online Masters of Financial Planning. I would say ZIP. How many 22 year old females would enroll in a Bachelor of Commerce/Business. I would say a lot.
A younger person would more likely study a broad degree in Finance…initally. This is the pool that I believe we ( I say we because I’m an adviser), especially if we wish to attract more Woman. Not exclude them.
CSU offers a Bachelor of Business with the ability to major in Accounting, Finance, HR, Marketing. None of these subjects are on FPEC list and they DO NOT have a major in Financial Planning. Maybe one day. So a young person in Dubbo or Orange given the costs involved in moving from Dubbo to Sydney at age 22 are more likely to enroll in CS as opposed to the University of Western Sydney and major in FP. The USW can offer majors like Fin Planning but CS due to numbers cannot. Does this not somewhat disadvantage rural areas? Does this not somewhat limit female entrants? Is it not like closing and moving all the Universities that offer Medicine solely to Dubbo and then wondering why there are no rural Doctors?
So what you’re saying, sounds like is if I lived in Dubbo or Orange the only way to become a Financial Planner from 2019 is to do a Masters of Financial Planning. Is this small over sight (for the good people of Orange and Dubbo), because FASEA adopted FPEC without any consultation, in what seemed like five minutes, and the relationship of people between FASEA and FPEC. i.e the glaring conflict of interest.
IMD….International Men’s Day is on 19th November.
Bring on the dedicated special day IFA where, in the name of equality, all reporting will be focused on the men in financial services and the wonderful contribution they make to the profession.
Lets see if IFA have the courage to be equitable in celebrating the important role men play or will they succumb to the fear of being accused of bias ?
How is the advice community less welcoming or less of a fair place for women?
What additional pathways and avenues need to be established for women to enter a career in financial planning? Are there barriers in place today or is it just a case that less women are choosing financial planning as a career?
Yes, refer to Jordan Peterson. Its all about Personal Responsibility. If you’re good enough and want it badly enough, you’ll get it. No one (male or female) should be asked to get out of the way and relinquish their own personal goals and aspirations, in order to make it easier for someone else. Its called capitalism folks!
There are numerous barriers and if you don’t know what they are, you haven’t listened nor understood.
One of which barriers appears to be that, apparently, a relatively small number of women now speak for all women – which seems like a very big call to me. Not much point replacing undeserving men with equally undeserving women in any industry to achieve “balance”. This is why individual merit, ability, must prevail in this movement or it’s not in fact real at all, it’s just affirmative action.
whilst fundamentally I believe the message of collective – of inclusion is a good thing – in more recent times the debate has been hijacked by the strident shouty – types – the attached video breaks ( with clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson ) down really well – some of the common myths that are perpetuated – that all things are equal – well worth the time to listen – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54&t=41s –
for mine this is one reason why its really difficult to get involved with the ideologues and the social justice warriors
Thanks for sharing this video this guys is doing a great deal of good work in exposing (to those willing to think anyway) the flaws in certain arguments of those otherwise know as virtue signallers.