Lack of women in City ‘may have contributed to financial woes’

A recent Commons Treasury Committee report has suggested that the lack of female employees working in the City – the UK’s financial centre – may have contributed to problems in the monetary sector.

The Women In The City report claimed that it was this lack of gender diversity that may have made the effective challenge and scrutiny of executive decisions “less efficient”.

Furthermore, Professor Charles Goodhart suggested that having a greater female representation at senior levels in financial services firms could have made the recent banking crisis “less likely”, although the Treasury Committee claimed this may be going “too far”.

However, commenting on the report, Tatjana Hine, vice-president of the World Association of Women Entrepreneurs, said that it is not necessarily a case of the City not wanting to employ women, but that some females do not wish to be in that position.

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“It’s long hours and hard working and if women have a family, wanting to be there until midnight is not necessarily something they want to do,” she added.

But discrimination may still exist, as Ms Hine went on to claim that the City is the “last bastion” of problems for women as it continues to be very male dominated.

Posted by Ross George