Wednesday’s Headlines: Wall Street Gender Bias Runs Deep

This may not come as a surprise to the gals on "The Street," but a New York Times article details just how sexist U.S. investment banks are. In fact, just 3 percent of Wall Street execs are women. The recent exodus of female banking execs including J.P. Morgan’s Ina Drew and former international operations head Heidi Miller, while Bank of America’s wealth management leader Sallie Krawcheck and Morgan Stanley former co-head Zoe Cruz made headlines with their departures.

To explain, the Times quotes the head of Catalyst, which researches gender in the workplace:

“The Wall Street culture is characterized by what you might call really macho kinds of behavior,” said Ilene H. Lang, Catalyst’s president and chief executive. “So what’s looked up to on Wall Street are people who swagger, people who will do the deal at any cost, people who will work day and night, hour and hour, for lots and lots of money and they don’t care about anything else. Those are characteristics that you think about when asked to talk about what the Wall Street culture is … it’s very hard for women or men to picture women being that way because that conflicts with the stereotypic norms of what women should be like.”

Meanwhile, women who take on those aggressive personalities are labeled the b-word. Again, all bad news for the chicks. Meanwhile, research shows that mentoring programs do little to better this dynamic since men’s mentors tend to be higher-ranking when compared to women’s mentors.

 

Other News:

Investment banks are cutting staff in Asia. [WSJ]

Morgan Stanley and Citi chose investment bank Perella Weinberg value to their brokerage venture. [WSJ]

Libor probe extends to traders. [Dow Jones]

Shareholders of the London Metal Exchange agreed to a $2.1 billion takeover deal from Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing. [DealBook]

Top business schools scramble to recruit vets. [Businessweek]