Comment: Diversity definitions - is it enough to just be there, or do we want more?
Recent sex discrimination lawsuits by female bankers in the UK have sparked the usual frenzy of media and public debate. News reports, opinion pieces and scores of office water-cooler conversations have already decided guilt or innocence in the minds of many people.
The official issues are obvious, but there is a subtext to the public debates: when we talk about 'diversity', are we just talking about adding underrepresented groups to banking as it stands, or do we want to change the culture of banking itself? If verbally bashing each other is something male bankers have always done, some say, women should understand that this is 'just the way the banking world works'.
The debate sparks a furore over other issues as well. Take long working hours. Traditionally it has been assumed that any banker who really cared about his job would put in endless working hours, no matter what else had to be sacrificed. The mandate was clear: 'Make the company a profit, as large a profit as possible, no matter what it takes.' Social skills? Not necessary, when you've just brought in millions of pounds for your clients.
There was the problem, of course, of male bankers having heart attacks because they ate only fast food and had no social outlet. The situation is no different today: at a seminar in the City of London last week on executive coaching, when the speaker suggested that leaders need whole-life balance in order to be truly productive at work, an HR representative gave a blunt response: 'My traders aren't interested in wholeness. They're interested in pursuing nothing but money until they drive themselves into the ground and burn out like moths in a flame.'
Traditional banking had an answer to this: the wife. In banking, law, and politics, it was assumed that a man's wife would work full-time on his behalf, managing the rest of his life - from choosing gifts for other people (and putting his name on them, as if he had chosen them) to making his meals and scheduling his doctor's appointments. The banker never had to think about anything other than profit, because his wife did all the work.
When women entered banking, the system no longer functioned: not only were their husbands unavailable for gift-buying duty, but women's definition of the 'good life' required more than money alone would provide.
While the male banker might see his life as fantastic because he recently purchased a million-pound yacht and parked it, abandoned, in a marina somewhere, the female banker actually wanted to have a daily social life, fitness regimen and positive relationships with her children left over when she retired.
More alarmingly, as women began to demand job arrangements which would allow for an outside life, it began to appear that some male bankers might want one as well. An American worker offers a humorous send-off on the 'true life confessions' of the male banker:
HR officer: When did you realise you secretly wanted a balance between work and home?
Male Banker: When Jane Smith came to the firm, performed brilliantly, but didn't make managing director because she kept picking up the kids after school. I have always secretly wanted to pick up my kids after school, too, but I worried that I would be shunned. One time I went to little Joey's liver transplant on lunch break, and when I came back to the office I found women's underwear on top of my desk. And a note: "Aren't you man enough to wait until the markets close? The kid was under anaesthesia anyway!'
The tale may be a caricature, but the reality is not far off: when men in banking express a desire to have life outside work, they are seen as 'acting like women' and lacking commitment to their job. And acting like a woman is, of course, the worst thing a banker can do for his career.
John Varley, group deputy chief executive of Barclays Bank, outlined his perspective at a recent seminar on integrating women into organisational culture: in his opinion, both men and women need what women have to offer at work.
Men and women may do things differently, but this does not mean that women's way of doing things is inferior. Nor, he said, should the male way of doing things be held up as a standard simply because it is the way things have always been done. On working hours, Barclays will take a stand next year: it will no longer allow any internal meetings to be scheduled outside the hours of 9am and 5pm.
As women's numbers increase in banking, it no longer works to divide female bankers into those who can 'take it' and those who cannot. It is increasingly obvious that both male and female bankers would like a different way of life.
How do we define diversity? As a multitude of faces doing an unchanged job, or as a mentality that will change the culture of entire organisations?
hfranek@efinancialcareers.com
