Why Finance Would Be Better Off With More Women Leaders It makes no sense that so few women are at the helm in the financial industry.
By Timothy Sykes Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
In today's competitive business world, some of the most impressive and successful CEOs and entrepreneurs are women. However, looking at stats across the industry, it may not seem this way. Despite the growing number of women making their mark on the professional world, there still aren't as many women CEOs and women on Wall Street as one would think. In fact, in the entire Fortune 500 and S&P 500 overall, only 4.6 percent of companies have female CEOs.
Women are vastly underrepresented in the financial industry. Unfortunately, the financial industry is made up of a very low percentage of women, and these low numbers do not make any sense. A recent study from Morningstar found that less than 10 percent of all fund managers in the United States are women. While about 74 percent of the industry's assets are run exclusively by men, only 2 percent of these assets are run only by women, the rest are run by mixed-gendered teams. This seems pretty shocking, right?
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It is an unfortunate misconception in today's market that women are not fit to be leaders and it is one that needs to be overturned. In fact, it would be better for all parties involved in more women started leading businesses. This isn't only true because of the millions of successful, talented and intelligent women that are in the market today, but it is true because studies have found that women are actually more logical and more reasonable than men, meaning they have just what it takes to lead some of today's biggest financial companies.
This high level of logic and reason also means that many women traders are actually naturally better traders, and there have been several studies that support the notion that women simply have more of what it takes to make better trades. Yet there is still such a small number of women traders out there.
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We need more women to start taking on these financial leadership roles and to start trading, to start improving the entire market. I have seen first-hand just how powerful and successful they can be. I only hope that a few stories about dominant women in the industry can empower even more women to step up and take on roles in the financial sector.
Just look at one of the most inspiring and successful women in finance that I know, one of my own female students, Jane Galliana. She is an upcoming trader with my program who quickly went from a stay-at-home mom to a six-figure trader. I love hearing her story and telling other people about her success because she literally started with no experience, worked hard, studied constantly and used her own skills to make a better life for her family.
Jane, who lovingly calls herself "Sugar Jane" is one of my top performing students. What is most impressive is that she passed her six figure mark, a little over a year after she started and became a trading challenge student. A truly selfless mother at heart, Jane doesn't just work hard to create profits for herself, she also works on helping others achieve the same goal. In addition to doing her own work, she has her own blog documenting her journey and was even kind enough to act as a guest blogger on my site recently, sharing her own tips on how to make it in the trading world.
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With great role models and success stories like Jane, we can only hope that more women will to take a chance and step in to the finance arena, they may be surprised to find just how far they can go with a little push.
