June 9, 2010 • 18 mins
If there were more women on Wall Street, would the financial crisis have happened? Are women more suited to the world of finance than men, or less? Molly and Cristen explore these questions and the role of American women in finance in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House top Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen, I'm money Bags. Molly money Bags, Molly, alright,
(00:22):
so money Bags. On March twenty nine, two thousand and ten, Uh,
there was a Women in Finance Symposium. Don't I know it? Yes,
you are money bags today. Can see the dollars signs
in your eyes. Um. But basically it was this event
put together by the Department of Treasury in partnership with
(00:43):
the White House Counsel on Women and Girls in celebration
of Women's History months. So I got together a lot
of a lot of big wigs from the finance world. Basically,
they found like the handful of sea level finance execs
who happened to also be women and got them together
in a room to talk about the state of women
(01:03):
in finance. And the thing that I was most surprised
about with this event, Molly, was just kind of the
lack of press coverage about it. The event was sort
of a non event except for I feel like the
one press worthy thing that came out of this was
a quote from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner in response to
a question from a panel an audience member asking whether
(01:27):
the financial crisis would have happened if women had been
running Wall Street? Could women do a better job running
Wall Street? Essentially, and he said, quote, well, that's kind
of a low bar. How you might ask could women
have not done better? So people are saying, whoa, hey,
Gitner's pro women in Wall Street. That's great because any
went on to point out that women make up a
(01:47):
frighteningly small percentage of uh, the executives on Wall Street,
and a lot A large part of the symposium was
to try to um reignite women's interests in going into finance.
So let's talk about why are all these women? Yeah,
because the question, the question that was posted to Guidner
at the symposium did come straight from a New York
(02:10):
magazine article that was published right around the same time
entitled Surprise what if women ran Wall Street? Because there's
some thought, I mean, as usual when our podcasts, there's
some element of gender stereotypes. They're going to play into
it that women are these level headed, logical beings when
it comes to money because as a head of a household,
they're going to make sure that their family doesn't starve,
(02:32):
that everyone's well taken care of. And they're not as aggressive.
They're not the risk takers. That's a man's thing. Men
have historically taken care of the money. It's it's two
different worlds. And can women really integrate into this world
and become a force to be reckoned with on Wall Street?
And if they did, would the financial situation be better? Yeah?
(02:52):
So Sheila call Hacker of New York Magazine really digs
into this idea of differences between men and women, and
she traces it all the way down to biology, namely hormones. Molly,
one of our favorite topics here on stuff. Mom never
told me we talked about hormones in a while. We haven't.
So let's say hello again to testosterone and estrogen. And
(03:16):
a lot of it goes back to the risk taking
behavior fueled by testosterone. Obviously, you get on the floor
of the New York Stock Exchange if you're a trader,
and the men just go crazy, you know, I mean
they're trading competition, Yes, high competition, high stress. Uh, lots
and lots of money at risk here, and there have
(03:38):
been studies tracing levels of trestosterone and cortisone, which is
a hormone that we release as in response to stress,
and researchers have traced how men's hormone levels testosterone and
cortisone levels will shift during as the market fluctuates, essentially
during a trading day. Right there, talking about essentially the
influence of the environment on the testosterone, but basically saying
(04:01):
that if it's a guy who works maybe here for example,
at how stuff works, he's just writing his articles, doing
his podcasts. There's not a lot of proggressive behavior here.
Sorry to disappoint, I don't know, Josh, and Chuck gets
a little Harriet sometimes true. Um, but if you are
in this very highly competitive, stressful environment, that that's when
testosteroniser is going to surge. And there have been you know,
(04:25):
these studies lead the researchers to conclude that risk taking
and testosterone are linked. And because women have less testosterone
than men, then they will never have those risk taking
abilities that the men do. Yeah, supposedly, women produce fifteen
times less test saserone than men do, therefore inhibiting our
risk taking behavior. UM. And Terry Burnham is an economist
(04:48):
and author of Mean Markets and Lizard Brains, How to
Profit from the New Science of Irrationality. And he's really
looked into this testosterone financial risk taking connection, and uh
he found the higher testosterone men are more likely to
reject money that was offered to them if someone else
was getting a larger share. So it's not only just
(05:08):
this risk taking, but it's also this competition with the
men around you. You know, the idea of giving up money,
just not accepting free money simply because you know, I
rejected a hundred dollars just because I knew you were
going to get two hundred dollars. It's kind of ridiculous
to think about. But um, I think that that's kind
of a good example of the irrationality that that does
(05:30):
exist in Wall Street when when you do when you
do have all of this financial risk at stake. And
he points out as well that a younger CEO, who
therefore has a higher level of testosterone, is more likely
to walk away from a merger um even when the
deal was in his company's best interests, just because there's
that competitive, highly competitive, cutthroat environment, that stereotypical gender norms
(05:56):
would say that women just aren't cut out for you know,
which you haven't handled it Russia. Burnham points out that
we might just have a role to play that's not
being well used right now, and he calls women the
big break pedal, so that if you've got that young
CEO about to walk off because he wants to prove that,
like his pile of money is bigger than another pile
of money, that a woman could be the person that having.
(06:16):
He says, all right, here's the quote. Having too many
men involved in business might cause them to take more risk,
and having more women would probably be good in lots
of settings because they can act as this stopper well
and going along those same lines, UM John Coas is
a Senior Researcher Fellow in Neuroscience and Finance at the
University of Cambridge and he has really examined the behavior
(06:38):
of UH stack traders and he says that these men
will display clinical symptoms of mania. He says their delusional, euphoric, overconfident,
have racing thoughts and a diminished need for sleep. Essentially,
they go insane for money and UM and he he
feels like UH, a lot of these volatile moods wings
(07:00):
that happen are really a male phenomenon, right, he says.
I mean, he makes the case that it's dangerous to
have males whose brains are so affected handling so much money,
which brings us to a pretty interesting figure in this
New York Magazine article, Doug Hershworn who calls himself a
peak performance coach to Wall Street traders, and he teaches
(07:21):
both men and women how to make better decisions and
avoid the destructive habits that can ruin the economy. And
it's it's sort of funny to read about the exercises
he gives the men. I mean, they essentially, you know,
he has to tell them, like, this is testosterone. You
need to curb it. You need to journal, you need
to you know, go take a kickboxing class. You need
(07:43):
to get out of your own head. It's it's almost
sort of the advice you'd expect a woman to get.
So on the flip side, the whole theory is that
if there were more women involved in the higher levels
in Wall Street, making the trades, pulling the levers, what
have you, uh, then they would balance out this kind
of testosterone fueled insanity that led us to this crisis
(08:07):
in the first place, because she starts off the article
by saying that people in the top tiers of the
financial sector will tell you that in order to succeed,
you cannot let your emotions get the best of you,
when in fact, a lot of the behavior that caused
the financial meltdown were fueled by very emotional responses to
these very competitive men who didn't want to be seen
(08:29):
as underperforming, who didn't want to be seen as not
risk taking enough. And if we had had more of
a level headed woman who just simply doesn't have the
same biological drives to be as aggressive, even if it's
an incredibly stupid idea, Uh, then we've been much better
shape than we are now. Molly. This is also we
have to take all this with a grain of salt.
(08:50):
I mean, obviously a day trader's success doesn't just hinge
on his levels of testosterone, right, man or woman. Obviously
you've got to be smart and know what you do
in order to succeed. And you know we're not we're
not male bashing here. We have no idea if there
were a ton of women in charge on Wall Street,
if things would have been better. It's it's an unknown.
Maybe it would have been the same. Maybe we've been better,
(09:11):
maybe I've been worse. But you're right, there does need
to be some intelligence in this Christian and both men
and women are going to business school. The rates of
women enrolling in business school programs is on the rise.
As of two thousand nine, women made up thirty nine
point three percent of full time students in American business schooled,
compared to thirty four point one percent five years earlier,
(09:33):
according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools. But now, molly,
let us contrast that to industry numbers once we get
out of college. And this is according to the Harvard
Business Review, less than eighteen percent of corporate officers and
boards of directors of Fortune five hundred financial services firms
are females. So how did we go for making up
(09:56):
almost of the business school students to making up less
than of these high tier jobs. So it seems to
me that, you know, you can make that argument about
testosterone in biology all you want, but when it comes
down to it, it seems there's something very unfriendly in
Wall Street culture to women. It's very hard to integrate
(10:17):
into this old boys club. You know, we found one
uh historical article from the seventies about how when a
London stock exchange allowed women, and it was all about
how this was the last bastion of masculinity finally being
taken over. I mean it's, you know, for some reason
or other, whether it's just that ancient idea that men
handle money, men make the money, men deal with the money.
(10:39):
It's been a very hard stereotype to break, even hundreds
of years later. Yeah, I mean even in we have
a huge class action lawsuit against Meryll Lynch when only
six women were in charge in Meryll's one hundred and
forty branches, which made up four point three percent of
the total. And since the recession there's also been a
slew of sex discrimination cases is at a lot of
(11:01):
these larger financial firms from women who are saying that
they have been unfairly treated because they have taken maternity
leave or they have you know, come back after maternity
leave and wanted to you know, breastthrough their child or
what have you. Basically, once they once they want to
have a kid, they're screwed and their and their job
is slowly whittled away into nothing. And when there were
(11:22):
all the layoffs after the recession women had women faced
a disproportionate number of them. Essentially, a lot of people
got fired, but since women made up so few employees
to begin with, it hit them a lot harder. So
we have Zoe Cruz, who was alsted in November two
thousand seven as co president of Morgan Stanley. And then
we have Aaron Callan, who was demoted in June two
(11:45):
thoight a CFO to the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers. And
finally we have Sally Crawcheck, who resigned in September two
thousand eight, is chief executive of City Groups Global Wealth
Management Unit. And those three names come up again and
again because when they were first promoted to these sea
level positions, it was a big deal that finally women
were starting to get a foothold in the financial sector,
(12:07):
and then all of a sudden, the recession hits and
you have, you know, three of the lead women in
the industry. All of a sudden they're gone. Now some
people have gone back and said, well, they were completely
enpt and shouldn't have been in those jobs in the
first place. But I think it's um, you know, kind
of a an example of what seems to be a
gender imbalance in the firings that have happened as a
(12:29):
result of the recession, the recession, because without naming names,
it seems there are some inepped men who kept their positions.
Oh yes, it's true to put it politely, to put
it politely, yeah, but then uh, you know, even in
the lower tiers, Like I said, there have been all
of these lawsuits that have come up, um that we
read about in Forbes magazine where again and again, these
(12:50):
same types of situations were happening to women who had
proven themselves as very able, high achieving employees, who at
some point would take the quote unquote off ramp as
it is termed to have a child. Then they would
come back and their job would be gone. And you know,
they keep calling at the off ramp, Kristen. But some
(13:11):
of these some of these women barely took the exit.
They talked about one woman who was in labor and
came to the office so that she could answer questions
before she started her maternally. I mean, these women are
going out of their way to make the situation where
they're not you know, they're not checking out for years
at a time. This is these are very brief maternity
leaves um and you know, then they'll come back to
work and they just want the opportunity to breastfeeds somewhere
(13:32):
and they're getting, you know, the runaround from the male bosses.
But even when these cases come up, a lot of
women understandably are nervous about um taking part in these
clash to action lawsuits but for fear of being ostracized
in their job and the same thing happening to dint
to them. For instance, in this Forbes article talks about
(13:53):
in the summer two thousand seven, uh, there was a
forty six million dollar class action settlement with Morgan Stanley
on the basis of sex discrimination. And Alice Hughes, who
was one of the people who was you know, helping
to settle all of these claims, said that a lot
of the women who could have cashed in on that
(14:15):
forty six million dollars suit chose not to say anything.
She says out of quote sheer fear that even if
they kept their jobs, they might be excluded from benefits
like getting a chunk of business when another broker left
the firm. And then she goes on to say, I mean,
and they're right about it. You know, they probably made
the right decision if they wanted to hang on to
their job, because even if they ended up leaving the company,
(14:37):
they would be blacklisted from working at any other major firms.
So while all this is going on, though, Molly, I
think we would be remiss to not mention though some
of the women who are in very prominent positions UM
in the financial sector, especially in government positions. For instance,
we have Treasure of the United States Rosie Rios. We
(14:59):
also have Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bear, who
Fortune Magazine named as the second most powerful woman in
the world. That's pretty good, pretty impressive. UM. And then
we have Securities in Exchange Commissioned Chairwoman Mary Shapiro and
Small Business Administrator kar Enge Mills. You know, they're definitely
they're all these women, I mean that those were just
(15:20):
those are just government positions, but you know, and they're
also women UM in the higher ranks obviously as some
of these major firms that we've mentioned UM, but there
still seems like there's not enough enough women. She's sort
of between the sea level and the entry level to
get those women up, get them from the off ram
(15:42):
of off ramp if they want to take it back
to the on ramp, provide mentorship and lead them through
the trenches and really um close this gender gap on
Wall Street. Perfect rest. So we want to hear from
all of you on this issue, especially if you happen
to work in finance. Uh, maybe you can give us
a viewpoint from the trenches, what it's like to have mentors,
(16:05):
not have them. Who you see, who you don't see?
Does it? Does it suck? Yeah? I mean because we
were giving a very broad overview. I mean, the financial
sector covers, you know, so many different types of firms
and positions and and jobs, and we're just kind of
giving a broad brush of the whole thing. So we welcome,
you know, any more, any more details you would like
(16:27):
to share with me and Molly and our email addresses
mom stuff at how stuff works dot com. And now
we're going to read a couple of emails. First up
is one from Liz on our Political Quotas podcast. She writes,
I very much disagree with the idea of having these
gender quotas anywhere, but especially in government positions. Our Congress
(16:48):
may only be seventeen percent women, which is obviously a
smaller percentage we make up in the general population, but
I doubt Hispanic or African Americans make up their share
of Congress either. I don't have the sets to back
that up, just a feeling. Why I stop at gender?
Are we going to break up the entire population into ethnicity,
social standing, religion, income, and then place quotas on each
of these groups. I believe someone should be elected to
office because they're absolutely the best handa possible, not because
(17:10):
there's a position to fill that matches their genetic makeup.
The old white hair men in Congress are probably not
going to make it easier encouraging for women, but that
that's not something a quota is going to fix. All right, Well,
I've got one here from Bill, and he says, as
a dad with three daughters and a lovely wife, I
love your work and never miss an episode. Thanks Bill.
But however, I have one, admittedly knit picky thing that
(17:33):
drives me nuts. You guys is a term that bugs
me when addressed to a group that has females in it.
I realize that it's very common these days, but I'm
doing my best to stamp it out. When we go
on a restaurant as a family, and we were addressed
as you guys. I'm always tempted to say there is
only one of me. So far I've resisted that temptation.
Oh be a good idea, Bill, It's very easy to
(17:55):
simply drop the guy's portion. Are you ready to order?
Sounds so much better than are you guys ready to order?
I realized this is a little thing, but I had
to do my part to rid the world of this
annoying yet pervasive habit. And I gotta say, Bill, I
catch myself saying you guys all the time as well.
That's why I think that Southerners have it right when
we just say y'all. I agree. And on that note,
(18:15):
y'all can check out our Twitter, y'all can check out
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(18:37):
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home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve camera. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House top Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen, I'm money Bags. Molly money Bags, Molly, alright,
(00:22):
so money Bags. On March twenty nine, two thousand and ten, Uh,
there was a Women in Finance Symposium. Don't I know it? Yes,
you are money bags today. Can see the dollars signs
in your eyes. Um. But basically it was this event
put together by the Department of Treasury in partnership with
(00:43):
the White House Counsel on Women and Girls in celebration
of Women's History months. So I got together a lot
of a lot of big wigs from the finance world. Basically,
they found like the handful of sea level finance execs
who happened to also be women and got them together
in a room to talk about the state of women
(01:03):
in finance. And the thing that I was most surprised
about with this event, Molly, was just kind of the
lack of press coverage about it. The event was sort
of a non event except for I feel like the
one press worthy thing that came out of this was
a quote from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner in response to
a question from a panel an audience member asking whether
(01:27):
the financial crisis would have happened if women had been
running Wall Street? Could women do a better job running
Wall Street? Essentially, and he said, quote, well, that's kind
of a low bar. How you might ask could women
have not done better? So people are saying, whoa, hey,
Gitner's pro women in Wall Street. That's great because any
went on to point out that women make up a
(01:47):
frighteningly small percentage of uh, the executives on Wall Street,
and a lot A large part of the symposium was
to try to um reignite women's interests in going into finance.
So let's talk about why are all these women? Yeah,
because the question, the question that was posted to Guidner
at the symposium did come straight from a New York
(02:10):
magazine article that was published right around the same time
entitled Surprise what if women ran Wall Street? Because there's
some thought, I mean, as usual when our podcasts, there's
some element of gender stereotypes. They're going to play into
it that women are these level headed, logical beings when
it comes to money because as a head of a household,
they're going to make sure that their family doesn't starve,
(02:32):
that everyone's well taken care of. And they're not as aggressive.
They're not the risk takers. That's a man's thing. Men
have historically taken care of the money. It's it's two
different worlds. And can women really integrate into this world
and become a force to be reckoned with on Wall Street?
And if they did, would the financial situation be better? Yeah?
(02:52):
So Sheila call Hacker of New York Magazine really digs
into this idea of differences between men and women, and
she traces it all the way down to biology, namely hormones. Molly,
one of our favorite topics here on stuff. Mom never
told me we talked about hormones in a while. We haven't.
So let's say hello again to testosterone and estrogen. And
(03:16):
a lot of it goes back to the risk taking
behavior fueled by testosterone. Obviously, you get on the floor
of the New York Stock Exchange if you're a trader,
and the men just go crazy, you know, I mean
they're trading competition, Yes, high competition, high stress. Uh, lots
and lots of money at risk here, and there have
(03:38):
been studies tracing levels of trestosterone and cortisone, which is
a hormone that we release as in response to stress,
and researchers have traced how men's hormone levels testosterone and
cortisone levels will shift during as the market fluctuates, essentially
during a trading day. Right there, talking about essentially the
influence of the environment on the testosterone, but basically saying
(04:01):
that if it's a guy who works maybe here for example,
at how stuff works, he's just writing his articles, doing
his podcasts. There's not a lot of proggressive behavior here.
Sorry to disappoint, I don't know, Josh, and Chuck gets
a little Harriet sometimes true. Um, but if you are
in this very highly competitive, stressful environment, that that's when
testosteroniser is going to surge. And there have been you know,
(04:25):
these studies lead the researchers to conclude that risk taking
and testosterone are linked. And because women have less testosterone
than men, then they will never have those risk taking
abilities that the men do. Yeah, supposedly, women produce fifteen
times less test saserone than men do, therefore inhibiting our
risk taking behavior. UM. And Terry Burnham is an economist
(04:48):
and author of Mean Markets and Lizard Brains, How to
Profit from the New Science of Irrationality. And he's really
looked into this testosterone financial risk taking connection, and uh
he found the higher testosterone men are more likely to
reject money that was offered to them if someone else
was getting a larger share. So it's not only just
(05:08):
this risk taking, but it's also this competition with the
men around you. You know, the idea of giving up money,
just not accepting free money simply because you know, I
rejected a hundred dollars just because I knew you were
going to get two hundred dollars. It's kind of ridiculous
to think about. But um, I think that that's kind
of a good example of the irrationality that that does
(05:30):
exist in Wall Street when when you do when you
do have all of this financial risk at stake. And
he points out as well that a younger CEO, who
therefore has a higher level of testosterone, is more likely
to walk away from a merger um even when the
deal was in his company's best interests, just because there's
that competitive, highly competitive, cutthroat environment, that stereotypical gender norms
(05:56):
would say that women just aren't cut out for you know,
which you haven't handled it Russia. Burnham points out that
we might just have a role to play that's not
being well used right now, and he calls women the
big break pedal, so that if you've got that young
CEO about to walk off because he wants to prove that,
like his pile of money is bigger than another pile
of money, that a woman could be the person that having.
(06:16):
He says, all right, here's the quote. Having too many
men involved in business might cause them to take more risk,
and having more women would probably be good in lots
of settings because they can act as this stopper well
and going along those same lines, UM John Coas is
a Senior Researcher Fellow in Neuroscience and Finance at the
University of Cambridge and he has really examined the behavior
(06:38):
of UH stack traders and he says that these men
will display clinical symptoms of mania. He says their delusional, euphoric, overconfident,
have racing thoughts and a diminished need for sleep. Essentially,
they go insane for money and UM and he he
feels like UH, a lot of these volatile moods wings
(07:00):
that happen are really a male phenomenon, right, he says.
I mean, he makes the case that it's dangerous to
have males whose brains are so affected handling so much money,
which brings us to a pretty interesting figure in this
New York Magazine article, Doug Hershworn who calls himself a
peak performance coach to Wall Street traders, and he teaches
(07:21):
both men and women how to make better decisions and
avoid the destructive habits that can ruin the economy. And
it's it's sort of funny to read about the exercises
he gives the men. I mean, they essentially, you know,
he has to tell them, like, this is testosterone. You
need to curb it. You need to journal, you need
to you know, go take a kickboxing class. You need
(07:43):
to get out of your own head. It's it's almost
sort of the advice you'd expect a woman to get.
So on the flip side, the whole theory is that
if there were more women involved in the higher levels
in Wall Street, making the trades, pulling the levers, what
have you, uh, then they would balance out this kind
of testosterone fueled insanity that led us to this crisis
(08:07):
in the first place, because she starts off the article
by saying that people in the top tiers of the
financial sector will tell you that in order to succeed,
you cannot let your emotions get the best of you,
when in fact, a lot of the behavior that caused
the financial meltdown were fueled by very emotional responses to
these very competitive men who didn't want to be seen
(08:29):
as underperforming, who didn't want to be seen as not
risk taking enough. And if we had had more of
a level headed woman who just simply doesn't have the
same biological drives to be as aggressive, even if it's
an incredibly stupid idea, Uh, then we've been much better
shape than we are now. Molly. This is also we
have to take all this with a grain of salt.
(08:50):
I mean, obviously a day trader's success doesn't just hinge
on his levels of testosterone, right, man or woman. Obviously
you've got to be smart and know what you do
in order to succeed. And you know we're not we're
not male bashing here. We have no idea if there
were a ton of women in charge on Wall Street,
if things would have been better. It's it's an unknown.
Maybe it would have been the same. Maybe we've been better,
(09:11):
maybe I've been worse. But you're right, there does need
to be some intelligence in this Christian and both men
and women are going to business school. The rates of
women enrolling in business school programs is on the rise.
As of two thousand nine, women made up thirty nine
point three percent of full time students in American business schooled,
compared to thirty four point one percent five years earlier,
(09:33):
according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools. But now, molly,
let us contrast that to industry numbers once we get
out of college. And this is according to the Harvard
Business Review, less than eighteen percent of corporate officers and
boards of directors of Fortune five hundred financial services firms
are females. So how did we go for making up
(09:56):
almost of the business school students to making up less
than of these high tier jobs. So it seems to
me that, you know, you can make that argument about
testosterone in biology all you want, but when it comes
down to it, it seems there's something very unfriendly in
Wall Street culture to women. It's very hard to integrate
(10:17):
into this old boys club. You know, we found one
uh historical article from the seventies about how when a
London stock exchange allowed women, and it was all about
how this was the last bastion of masculinity finally being
taken over. I mean it's, you know, for some reason
or other, whether it's just that ancient idea that men
handle money, men make the money, men deal with the money.
(10:39):
It's been a very hard stereotype to break, even hundreds
of years later. Yeah, I mean even in we have
a huge class action lawsuit against Meryll Lynch when only
six women were in charge in Meryll's one hundred and
forty branches, which made up four point three percent of
the total. And since the recession there's also been a
slew of sex discrimination cases is at a lot of
(11:01):
these larger financial firms from women who are saying that
they have been unfairly treated because they have taken maternity
leave or they have you know, come back after maternity
leave and wanted to you know, breastthrough their child or
what have you. Basically, once they once they want to
have a kid, they're screwed and their and their job
is slowly whittled away into nothing. And when there were
(11:22):
all the layoffs after the recession women had women faced
a disproportionate number of them. Essentially, a lot of people
got fired, but since women made up so few employees
to begin with, it hit them a lot harder. So
we have Zoe Cruz, who was alsted in November two
thousand seven as co president of Morgan Stanley. And then
we have Aaron Callan, who was demoted in June two
(11:45):
thoight a CFO to the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers. And
finally we have Sally Crawcheck, who resigned in September two
thousand eight, is chief executive of City Groups Global Wealth
Management Unit. And those three names come up again and
again because when they were first promoted to these sea
level positions, it was a big deal that finally women
were starting to get a foothold in the financial sector,
(12:07):
and then all of a sudden, the recession hits and
you have, you know, three of the lead women in
the industry. All of a sudden they're gone. Now some
people have gone back and said, well, they were completely
enpt and shouldn't have been in those jobs in the
first place. But I think it's um, you know, kind
of a an example of what seems to be a
gender imbalance in the firings that have happened as a
(12:29):
result of the recession, the recession, because without naming names,
it seems there are some inepped men who kept their positions.
Oh yes, it's true to put it politely, to put
it politely, yeah, but then uh, you know, even in
the lower tiers, Like I said, there have been all
of these lawsuits that have come up, um that we
read about in Forbes magazine where again and again, these
(12:50):
same types of situations were happening to women who had
proven themselves as very able, high achieving employees, who at
some point would take the quote unquote off ramp as
it is termed to have a child. Then they would
come back and their job would be gone. And you know,
they keep calling at the off ramp, Kristen. But some
(13:11):
of these some of these women barely took the exit.
They talked about one woman who was in labor and
came to the office so that she could answer questions
before she started her maternally. I mean, these women are
going out of their way to make the situation where
they're not you know, they're not checking out for years
at a time. This is these are very brief maternity
leaves um and you know, then they'll come back to
work and they just want the opportunity to breastfeeds somewhere
(13:32):
and they're getting, you know, the runaround from the male bosses.
But even when these cases come up, a lot of
women understandably are nervous about um taking part in these
clash to action lawsuits but for fear of being ostracized
in their job and the same thing happening to dint
to them. For instance, in this Forbes article talks about
(13:53):
in the summer two thousand seven, uh, there was a
forty six million dollar class action settlement with Morgan Stanley
on the basis of sex discrimination. And Alice Hughes, who
was one of the people who was you know, helping
to settle all of these claims, said that a lot
of the women who could have cashed in on that
(14:15):
forty six million dollars suit chose not to say anything.
She says out of quote sheer fear that even if
they kept their jobs, they might be excluded from benefits
like getting a chunk of business when another broker left
the firm. And then she goes on to say, I mean,
and they're right about it. You know, they probably made
the right decision if they wanted to hang on to
their job, because even if they ended up leaving the company,
(14:37):
they would be blacklisted from working at any other major firms.
So while all this is going on, though, Molly, I
think we would be remiss to not mention though some
of the women who are in very prominent positions UM
in the financial sector, especially in government positions. For instance,
we have Treasure of the United States Rosie Rios. We
(14:59):
also have Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bear, who
Fortune Magazine named as the second most powerful woman in
the world. That's pretty good, pretty impressive. UM. And then
we have Securities in Exchange Commissioned Chairwoman Mary Shapiro and
Small Business Administrator kar Enge Mills. You know, they're definitely
they're all these women, I mean that those were just
(15:20):
those are just government positions, but you know, and they're
also women UM in the higher ranks obviously as some
of these major firms that we've mentioned UM, but there
still seems like there's not enough enough women. She's sort
of between the sea level and the entry level to
get those women up, get them from the off ram
(15:42):
of off ramp if they want to take it back
to the on ramp, provide mentorship and lead them through
the trenches and really um close this gender gap on
Wall Street. Perfect rest. So we want to hear from
all of you on this issue, especially if you happen
to work in finance. Uh, maybe you can give us
a viewpoint from the trenches, what it's like to have mentors,
(16:05):
not have them. Who you see, who you don't see?
Does it? Does it suck? Yeah? I mean because we
were giving a very broad overview. I mean, the financial
sector covers, you know, so many different types of firms
and positions and and jobs, and we're just kind of
giving a broad brush of the whole thing. So we welcome,
you know, any more, any more details you would like
(16:27):
to share with me and Molly and our email addresses
mom stuff at how stuff works dot com. And now
we're going to read a couple of emails. First up
is one from Liz on our Political Quotas podcast. She writes,
I very much disagree with the idea of having these
gender quotas anywhere, but especially in government positions. Our Congress
(16:48):
may only be seventeen percent women, which is obviously a
smaller percentage we make up in the general population, but
I doubt Hispanic or African Americans make up their share
of Congress either. I don't have the sets to back
that up, just a feeling. Why I stop at gender?
Are we going to break up the entire population into ethnicity,
social standing, religion, income, and then place quotas on each
of these groups. I believe someone should be elected to
office because they're absolutely the best handa possible, not because
(17:10):
there's a position to fill that matches their genetic makeup.
The old white hair men in Congress are probably not
going to make it easier encouraging for women, but that
that's not something a quota is going to fix. All right, Well,
I've got one here from Bill, and he says, as
a dad with three daughters and a lovely wife, I
love your work and never miss an episode. Thanks Bill.
But however, I have one, admittedly knit picky thing that
(17:33):
drives me nuts. You guys is a term that bugs
me when addressed to a group that has females in it.
I realize that it's very common these days, but I'm
doing my best to stamp it out. When we go
on a restaurant as a family, and we were addressed
as you guys. I'm always tempted to say there is
only one of me. So far I've resisted that temptation.
Oh be a good idea, Bill, It's very easy to
(17:55):
simply drop the guy's portion. Are you ready to order?
Sounds so much better than are you guys ready to order?
I realized this is a little thing, but I had
to do my part to rid the world of this
annoying yet pervasive habit. And I gotta say, Bill, I
catch myself saying you guys all the time as well.
That's why I think that Southerners have it right when
we just say y'all. I agree. And on that note,
(18:15):
y'all can check out our Twitter, y'all can check out
our Facebook, y'all can check out our blog, and y'all
can check out our our homepage, our homesite, people who
pay our bills. How stuff works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
stuff works dot com? Want more house stuff works? Check
(18:37):
out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com
home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
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