Women in Finance

Water Cooler
#81

You’re right about me and where I’m from. That’s a good ad hominem argument. And it makes me lose a little respect for you.

Nonetheless, I’m not sure that society is different elsewhere. I don’t know where you live, but look at the married couples that you know–particularly the sub-30 ones that have kids. When the kids get sick and can’t go to day care, who stays home with them?

And look at the older (40’s or 50’s) crowd. How many couples do you know who work equal jobs? Sure, Christina Applegate has (or had) a sitcom where the man gave up his career as a partner in a law firm so the woman could continue her job as a producer for a TV show. This doesn’t happen in real life–not in Midland, Texas; not in Dallas, Texas; not in New York City.

Who are the bigwigs in your company? They’re probably mostly male. And what do their wives do? Probably don’t work. Or if they do, they work job that’s far less demanding, both in terms of time and energy, than their husbands.

I bet you my paycheck vs. yours that if you take an honest look at society, you’ll find that what I have described is overwhelmingly the norm. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

#82

Just for the record, I googled “law firms in nyc” to see what pops up.

http://www.newyorkmedicalmalpracticelaw.net/ - Can’t see the profiles, but there is a picture of 13 people. Three of them (23%) are female.

http://www.cahill.com/professionals/search-results?showLawyers=1&s_lastname=A - Three partners on this page. All of them men. Six non-partners, only two of them women. (I excluded one person because I don’t know the gender. There’s no picture and it’s a foreign name.)

http://www.lanierlawfirm.com/attorneys/ - 60 attorneys. 70% male.

http://www.allenovery.com/search/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=*&r=aooffice%3d%22AQhOZXcgWW9yawhhb29mZmljZQECXiICIiQ%3d%22&officeid=8c8065e8-ad56-11e0-a68a-7de94724019b - On this page, out of 25 attorneys, 19 are male.

And of the few female attorneys on the pages, only a handful are over 40. Most of them are 25-ish and look straight out of college.

I know this is far from a scientific, empirical study using carefully gathered data, but it certainly does damage to the “Well, you’re from Texas and you’re backwards” argument.

#83

There’s a woman who’s a partner of a CPA firm out here who definitely fits this description. Hard working, hard-charging, rainmaker, and very well respected in the community. In fact, in the five biggest CPA firms here, there are TWO women partners. I know both of them very well and have a lot of respect for both of them.

And I know most of the fourteen male partners, too.

#84

I just found out that my company, women get 3 months of paid maternity leave at full salary, but its covered by our insurance under the short term disability policy. I wonder how women feel when they realize that having a baby is considered a disability for these purposes!

#85

Can’t debate a sample size of two.

#86

Posting the percentage of women who work at random law firms in NYC does not prove any point. I don’t support the propoganda that women don’t get equal pay, but I also won’t support an argument that because it’s the norm they should put their career to the side for the man. I grew up in a house where my mom made more money than my dad and he called out sick if we needed to go to the doctors, etc. For all the women you listed above in partner positions at those law/cpa firms that’s one more man that does that role in America. It’s important to point out that even if it isn’t the majority of households it happens more regularly than you would imagine.

#87

As a successful woman you shouldn’t have to sacrifice your work beyond child birth to have kids. To me the real question is do you feel like you’re too good for the average man who would do the more “motherly” tasks in a relationship? If that’s the problem then it’s more difficult to solve, but there are a lot of men who would gladly do more household things and raise a kid. In reality both parties are sacrificing something. One party is sacrificing their career dreams and the other is sacrificing the quality time with their family. Which would you pick? If you chose to stay home to spend quality time are you really sacrificing or trading off?

#88

If we are using anecdotes, I know way more young female dentists than young male dentists. Trust me, a periodontist in a big market makes substantially more than even most big-time CPA partners (unless they’ve been partners for over a decade), probably around $400-500k.

Greenman is right that more men are primary breadwinners, but I wouldn’t be surprised if higher income people are increasingly sharing bread-winning duties or have women who are the primary breadwinners. As people become more educated and make more money, they tend to be more open to lifestyles that are different from their parents’ ones.

#89

But I think the crux of the argument is really, “How many will you see in 20 years once these young ones decide to start having kids?” If history repeats itself, then many of these young female dentists will drop out of the workforce, or at least decide to be just a “staff” dentist somewhere, rather than own their own practice.

Either way, they will make less money, and they will do so voluntarily. No sexism or gender discrimination will have taken place. (Unless you can discriminate against yourself.)

#90

In Quebec, it’s 12 months, paid by the governement. There has been a mini baby boom the last 5 years. Quebec had the lowest birth rate in North America before this policy.

#91

And here I thought a declining french canadian population would benefit society as a whole, but I guess they don’t want to see their proportion in the country go down. But imagine that, people respond to incentives and free money? Shocker.

#92

Someone will have to pay the retirement and health expenses of baby boomers.

#93

This is such an ignorant point of view because it’s assuming that the man could make more than the woman. If one of these women marry some BSD Top 2 MBA KKR then it may make sense for them to not try their best, but if they marry some backoffice monkey would it not make sense for the man to assume more household chores if it meant the whole family was better off? Maybe I’m speaking from a younger or more northeast point of view, but the people I know are much less caught up in traditional duties and more with maximizing their own situation. History repeating itself is not that women need perform less time consuming jobs, but that the person providing less money to the family should. Until recently it wasn’t possible for women to make more than the man so that was the trend you saw, but the fact that is more women are enrolled in college than men now so this will begin to even out.

#94

And we may get to pay equality yet: not so much from paying women more, but by paying men less…

#95

Yes. If Person A owns their own practice, and person B works for person A, then it makes sense that A would make more than B. Doesn’t sound ignorant to me. Sounds perfectly logical.

And if person B voluntarily leaves the workforce (for whatever reason), or decides they don’t want to own their own practice (for whatever reason), then it’s hard to argue that they have been “discriminated against”, since they did this of their own free will, knowing the consequences and choosing to accept them.

Yes–if the women marry “down”. But in general, we tend to see people marry within their social classes. Again, you’re arguing some hypothetical world as it ought to be, in your opinion. I’m telling you what I see in the real world that we live in today.

A point which has already been somewhat debunked. Or at least as good as it can with merely a cursory glance.

Many women decide that staying at home with their children “maximizes their situation”, whatever that means. Can you give any other reason why 80% of the female lawyers aforementioned are straight-out-of-college types? Do you think that the % of female JD’s has skyrocketed in the last ten years? Why did the number of female lawyers mysteriously drop after the age of 30? (HInt–the only possible answer is “sexism”, of course.)

I’m not arguing with thist, but you’ve hardly made any kind of coherent point with this.

Hence, why I said “in 20 years, what will the picture look like?”

I’m sure that 20 years ago, in 1993, people were saying, “Women are catching up to men in the workforce. There are just as many female CPA/CFA/JD/DDS/CFP/BSD/M&A-on-the-buyside as there are men.” And 20 years later, it seems a great majority of them seem to mysteriously have disappeared. According to you, the only possible reasons for this are 1.) sexism, or 2.) they get raptured into thin air once they turn 35.

I’m still waiting for a well-thought out, non ad-hominem refutation to this. And I want to argue the POSITIVE STATEMENTS that I have made, not the NORMATIVE STATEMENTS that somebody else believes to be desirable. I believe this is still taught at Level 1 of the CFA curriculum.

#96

Bump, for the “only women in compliance” thread.

#97

Bump again, for the “Why don’t more women take the CFA exams” thread.

#98

Because the first bump yielded such awesome new posts.

Instead of bumping a thread, why not link to it in the new thread that’s already on the front page. Then if people want to read the old thread they can and if they think they have something to contribute they can bump it with actual content. Or, if no one feels like there’s anything to add, you’ve still made them aware of a similar, older thread without cluttering up the front page.

#99

^Because I can’t cut and paste in this browser. Otherwise, I would have.

#100

Bump, because I love Sweep and I can’t cut-and-paste the link.

I thought I’d show this to Emichan, rather than re-hash the same old same old.