AT WOR K
PHOTOGRAPH: PHILIP SINDEN
As the wine flowed, so did the confessions. One said she felt
more at ease asking friends for a recommendation to a gynae-
cologist than to a financial adviser; another, a high-powered
CEO, admitted to slipping funds under the table to a male com-
pa nion so he cou ld be seen to pay t he restaura nt bi ll.
Emilie Bellet, the author of You’re Not Broke You’re Pre-Rich,
and founder of Vestpod, which runs financial events aimed at
young women, was another guest. She worked in private equity
for several years before starting her own business. ‘I had never
set my own rates before, and I made them too low,’ she says.
‘I feared being rejected, or that it would look like I was bragg-
ing. It’s really hard to show your experience and expertise and
convert that into money.’
‘I don’t like to talk about my own financial success, because I
think it might come across as unattrac-
tive,’ says Tamara Gillan, the founder of
the marketing agency Cherry London,
and of the WealthiHer Network, which
aims to help transform the industry’s
approach to its fema le clients.
Yet talk about it we certainly should:
for it is clear that we need to shine a light
on the current inequity if we are ever
to reduce it. As it stands, the banking
industry is still overwhelmingly male; the
gender pay gap yawns as widely as ever
(with financial firms among the worst
offenders) and research published by the
Pensions Policy Institute in July found
that women are typically retiring on
pensions less than a third the size of men’s
(because of taking time out to shoulder
caring responsibilities) despite our longer
life expectancy.
On top of this, there’s the impact of
the ‘investment gender gap’, where just
one in five women currently hold an
investment compared to more than a
third of men. This is understandable,
given that they have less money to play
with in the first place, but nevertheless it’s
another factor perpetuating the wealth
disparity between the sexes. And there is no sign that matters
are improving for millennials: a study exploring their attitudes
to money found that almost twice as many men as women
were investing.
If female financial confidence remains low, it’s not surprising.
Until the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975, it was still legal for
banks to refuse mortgages to women without a male guarantor.
Even as late as the 1990s, when I tried to open a joint bank accountat Barclays with my then-boyfriend, we
were told that he had to be listed as the
principal card-holder – although I was
the main breadwinner – because he would
be the person invited to shareholder meet-
ings. (I’m happy to say that we opted for
a different bank.)
Discrimination is still endemic from
childhood onwards: there is evidence that
parents not only pay their sons more for
doing household chores but talk to them
differently about how to manage their
pocket money, with girls advised to budget
and boys on ways to grow their nest egg.
And while early financial education for
girls is vitally important and goes some
way to addressing the issues, according to
Diana Chambers, a family wealth mentor
who also attended the lunch, it’s a partial
response and does not reach a root cause
of the problem. ‘Even those of us who have
been educated financially may well
have been given clues that we should hide
our financial capacity,’ she says. ‘If you
compound that with an unfortunate
reality that many of us have inherited,
through generations, a submissive stance
in relation to the men in our lives, it’s not
surprising that a significant number of women aren’t claiming
the power of money. And money is power.’
Moreover, it’s better for both men and women if that power
is evenly distributed. According to WealthiHer’s 2019 report,
women are far more likely than men to want to use their money
to create better opportunities for people and society.
Meanwhile, a healthier gender balance on the boards of
financial institutions has been shown by the IMF to be associ-
ated with greater stability. As Christine Lagarde – recently
nominated as candidate for the presidency of the European
Central Bank – has famously declared: ‘If it had been Lehman
Sisters rather than Lehman Brothers, the world might well look
a lot different today.’A s the w ine
flowed, so
did the
confessions.
One woman
said she felt
more at ease
ask ing
friends for a
recommendation
to a g y naecologist
than to a
financial adviser
Lydia Slater