Women constitute only 20 per cent of Australian and 23.5 per cent of New Zealand financial advisers. Joint research by the University of Otago and RMIT University Melbourne found that difficulties in networking and “the gendered nature of flexible work” could be inhibiting women’s careers in financial advice.
“These factors aren’t necessarily wrong from an employment law perspective, however we’ve discovered they significantly impact career progression and job satisfaction for female advisers,” said Dr Helen Roberts.
The fact that women are often the primary caregiver for family means that may have difficulties in building long-term client bases or taking part in after-hours networking opportunities. The nature of those networking opportunities can also be part of the problem.
“Women we spoke to talked about barriers such as male dominated networking events being uncomfortable experiences as they often centred around alcohol,” said associate professor Rosalind Whiting.
“Those type of events might work well for men in a male-dominated industry, however for a female adviser they are often a negative experience, and the women prefer to network in other ways.”
The study – ‘Female Financial Advisers – Where Art Thou’ – suggested that the industry could normalise part-time work opportunities for all employees while providing a route for advancement from a part-time position to an advising role and promote changes in culture to champion recruitment and retention of women.
According to Dr Richards, women could also overcome some of the barriers by “finding the ‘right’ manager, receiving mentoring, selective networking and establishing a partnership arrangement with another adviser”.
Personally I’m happy to be in the minority! Takes a lot of guts to run your own FP business these days as well as ethics and empathy. There is no short cut to being a professional and making a long term commitment to clients. Oh, and yes I like a nice wine so clearly I wasnt surveyed.
Sexist article, many ladies love a drink and a good fun time. Nothing wrong with that either, it’s 2020 after all
The reason a low percentage of financial planners are women is that they are too smart to make such a career mistake.
Would like to acknowledge there is definitely a difference between business owner advisers and employed ones. The concerns with women in the industry are there when it comes to return to work after a career break to raise a family etc. This of course applies to any employee who does this. Also networking can be over breakfasts and lunches not only drinks. This is a finance industry wide shift needed to consider what is valuable and of benefit to attendees of any networking event. We are moving beyond Mad Men days.
Clearly this research is done by someone with no clue about how the profession works. Financial Advice is a very flexible role (everyone knows this). A successful adviser needs certain personality traits to thrive and those traits are common to some (but not all). Where is the outrage about 100% of underground coal miners being men?
The reality of what it takes to run a financial planning practise is clearly very different to an adviser sitting in a bank waiting for the referrals to be put through to him/her from the tellers. Creating flexible working hours is very difficult when the owner has to cover so many areas to ensure the survival of the practise. It is clear that the banks and big institutions have no idea of the cost and value of the distribution that has supported them. The ridiculous expectation that advisers should only be entitled to receive ongoing fees if they produce a piece of advice each year highlights how out of touch ASIC .The big fund trustees are kidding themselves if they expect adviser practises to act as their distribution while at the same time risk being flicked because they don’t tick an ASIC box.
Wow! So, to be clear, from this analysis all that is required to fix this problem is;
a) alcohol free networking events,
b) preferential recruitment (that is employing female candidates over any equally qualified male candidate),
c) part time work arrangements on request,
d) dedicated partnership/mentoring, and
e) guaranteed advancement to Adviser status for female employees.
I’m sure that sounds pretty reasonable if you are an academic at the University of Otago.