How to build a more diverse Quants team

How can financial institutions better enable careers for women in Quants?

There has long been a gender imbalance in the financial industry, and the quantitative finance sector is no stranger to this.

Nearly 10 years ago female representation in quantitative finance was estimated at just 21%, behind only trading and IT. Now improvements have been made, with recent data suggesting the number of female Financial Quantitative Analysts may have increased to 40%, but there is still a way to go, especially when it comes to more senior positions.

There are numerous theories as to why disparity exists in the industry, and the issue appears to start long before individuals even enter the workforce.

Pragmatic strategies and successful policies particular to ‘Women in Quants’ are often lost amongst wider communications addressing diversity and inclusion. It is vital therefore to understand the underlying root causes that impact candidates, but also address how firms approach and implement positive change regarding gender diversity, and their talent acquisition strategies to hire and retain such talent.

Underlying factors

Over the past few decades, there has been a massive improvement when it comes to women in areas of medicine, business, and law. Although these are male-dominated fields, it’s no longer uncommon to see successful female doctors, nurses, lawyers, and entrepreneurs.

Why then, when it comes to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, things aren’t as promising?

Perhaps the foundations of the problem lie deep within a gendered stereotype; beginning in school and higher education, that then transpires in the corporate ecosystem. There has been an increase in the number of women who study and pursue jobs in STEM and other related fields, but recent research reveals that their percentage in these fields is actually dropping. Considering the fact that there is a huge emphasis on gender equality, a lack of women in these professions does not make much sense and to fix something that isn’t working, we need to find out why it’s broken in the first place.

High priority is placed on STEM in schools, yet these efforts to expand female interest and employment into STEM and computer science are not working as well as intended. Usually middle school has plenty of options and support for girls to develops STEM skills, like science classes and science fairs. But beyond this academic stage, this support diminishes and so does female interest, resulting in fewer female graduates in the science, technology and engineering fields. If we take for example the most popular of quants degrees – computer science – the vast majority of computer science jobs are, and continue to be, male dominated.

If colleges, universities, and workplaces implemented the changes necessary to accommodate women and provide more support and a more positive environment for them to focus on their skills without the pressure that men do not face, we believe we would begin to see more women in quants.

How can firms take action?

In order to attract young female talent in quants, financial services firms globally must hold themselves partly accountable whilst driving positive change.

One way to combat this is to start by giving women more encouragement. Stigma consciousness and gender bias, whether incidental or deliberate, have a profound impact on attracting women into financial sciences and services.

At Selby Jennings we have identified a number of ways firms can make a real difference:

Role models

Identify potential ‘brand ambassadors’ within the business to promote and form groups to discuss topics around diversity and inclusion from a leadership, progression and candidate attraction perspective.

Create opportunities beyond the job itself

Introduce mentoring schemes, internal and external quantitative female talent groups and even invite senior female quants within the business to the interview panel, conduct round tables, seminars or networking events.

Start early

Partner with universities, colleges and secondary schools to attract female talent at a graduate level. Don’t just offer things like scholarships and graduate schemes, but invite senior leaders from the firm to speak with students in lectures, discussion panels and mentoring sessions.

Be gender neutral

Ensure job advertisements and marketing are gender neutral. Certain words have gender bias, so be cautious of using certain language to attract potential employees.

Even though companies are trying to increase diversity, the gender gap is still a pressing issue for a number of our clients. The risk to employers failing to implement positive change regarding gender diversity is that they will continue to find it difficult to attract and retain such talent. It is therefore vital to demonstrate and communicate this to candidates throughout the hiring process.

Part of our job as talent experts at Selby Jennings is to assist in this effort in engaging a diverse pool of talent, but the message really has a greater impact when it comes directly from their future employer.

Regardless of the challenges, Selby Jennings is here to support those hiring, and those looking for new opportunities, as a specialist talent partner in the Quants space.

Lauren Dennis, Vice President at expert financial talent partner Selby Jennings, will be sharing her thoughts on women’s underrepresentation, challenges and opportunities surrounding talent, and how firms can better enable careers for women in Quants, in an engaging roundtable at QuantMinds International. Join Lauren and Selby Jennings at ‘How to build a more diverse Quants team’.