Men in banking don't want to date women in banking. That's ok

Valentine's Day has been and gone, and for some women in banking it won't have been easy. While 'men in banking' are all the rage, 'women in banking' are notably not. As we noted a few years ago, the financial services industry is full of impressive single women with dating issues. This hasn't changed.  

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"Men who are looking for something serious don't want to date women in banking, especially if they work in banking themselves," says a managing director (MD) at one leading boutique bank, speaking off the record. "They know that female bankers are highly competitive, that they may not show up on a date, that vacations are likely to be ruined by work and stress. When I worked in banking, my friends advised me to say I worked in marketing instead."

There are no figures for the proportion of women that are single in banking, but there are plenty of horror stories. "A lot of the women on the trading floor have children from a sperm bank," says one senior saleswoman. "It's because they can be unpleasant, unattractive and aggressive," she claims contentiously. "They're rich, they have expensive clothes and personal trainers, but no one wants to date them. They've become hyper-masculine from working in such a masculine industry." 

That may not always be accurate. Lucy Puttergill, a former JPMorgan sales VP who coaches female bankers to get the most from life, says she works with plenty of "beautiful, successful women" whose jobs simply take up so much of their time that there's no space for anything else.

"A lot of what women struggle with is actually getting off the desk to go to a date," says Puttergill. It's not because their bosses command them to work so hard, but because they've got used to deprioritizing their personal lives, says Puttergill. Changing that self-imposed dynamic isn't easy.

For women who can make the time, there are - needless to say - men out there. The banking MD says she is one of the highly competitive, highly driven women in finance, and that this comes with the territory when you're out there originating deals. "My husband doesn't work in banking, and we have the kind of relationship where he does the cooking and I talk to builders," she says. "He's very low ego. This is probably why it works." 

Puttergill says her female clients often spend a lot of time working on themselves. This typically involves becoming more emotionally resilient and ensuring that you're not looking for a relationship just to fill a void. However, it can also mean embracing the notion that you don't need to be with a man who earns more than you do. "The desire to be protected is entrenched in the female psyche and money is a signifier of safety," says Puttergill. "But it makes no sense because many women in banking are financially independent." 

As female bankers move away from measuring male desirability in monetary terms, Puttergill says they need to look for alternatives like presence, emotional stability, maturity and commitment to the relationship instead. The boutique MD says this is what a non-banking husband brings to her table: "Without my husband, I wouldn't be able to do this job. I have someone who doesn't question my travel and who texts me when it's late and say there's dinner at home," she says. 

There are rules of the game, though. The MD says she never talks about work at home. The saleswoman criticising her female colleagues for being too masculine, says she makes a point of never being like that: "You don't need to turn into an asshole just because you work with them." 

Staying single is also fine, though. "The data shows over and over again that for women - the happiest cohort are single and without kids," says Puttergill. Relationships need to be taken off their pedestal, she adds. "The social capital put on relationship status is rubbish. There are just as many miserable couples as singles out there." 

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