Do Successful Women In Finance Have A Screw Loose ...

Deal Journal writer Shira Ovide recently wrote:

?Senior female executives on Wall Street are like bald eagles: Majestic, but extremely rare. And each top woman who leaves or is forced from her post will spark anew the ?whither women? questions and stories about why Wall Street is dominated by dudes. At this point, Wall Street would love a few more top-ranking women, if only to stop those pesky questions.?

Women in executive positions on Wall Street have always been an endangered species but since the Financial Crisis in 2008, they have been disappearing at even faster rates. Erin Callan, the chief financial officer at Lehman Brothers, left months before the investment bank filed for bankruptcy. Zoe Cruz, the co-president of Morgan Stanley, was ousted in a management shake-up in late 2007. Terri Dial lasted just a year as chief executive of Citigroup?s consumer business in North America. Most recently Sallie Krawcheck, arguably the most powerful woman on Wall Street, was pushed out of her position as head of the Bank of America Merrill Lynch global wealth unit.

These high-profile exits are not helping the fact that women account for only 2.7% of the chief executives in the financial industry, and 16.8% of the executive officers, according to a study by Catalyst. But for the small minority of women in finance who do make it into that executive suite, there seem to be more complaints than compliments from the people who work for them. These women are very good at their jobs but in order to get to this level it seems that they had to have a certain quality, that many other women don?t or don?t even want to have. They have learned to deal with the long hours, not seeing their family and friends, the consequences of a male-dominated atmosphere which often makes both men and other women think there is something wrong with them. But do these women actually have something wrong with them or do people just not know how to handle a woman who has succeeded in finance?

Margo Johnson worked as a Client Service Associate to the Executive Vice President at Merrill Lynch, and when he was recruited by Morgan Stanley he took several of his team members with him including her. His role was to be ?shared? with the other Vice President and Johnson said the woman in this role was not happy with this arrangement from the beginning:

?When he told her he wanted to keep me as his CSA because I was well versed with his clientele and had been working with them and him for some time, she was fine with the arrangement until she met me in person.

She looked right at me and said I needed to dress down and not wear any make up, the brokers in the office didn?t need a pretty face to distract them. My first thought was ?Wow ? if she were a guy and said that, I would own this place.? As time went on, she made it clear she did not like or appreciate attractive women working in ?her? branch and discouraged us to form friendships. She would show up to the office when she decided, if at all, ?and managed the lowest ranking branch in the Morgan Stanley realm, but she managed to hang on to her role, when we arrived everyone was way under par for their numbers. Whenever someone from headquarters would announce they were coming to our office to visit she would have all the secretaries spend the entire week cleaning and reorganizing the office and making sure everyone was wearing suits and made sure everyone said what a great job she is doing. It was total bullshit and we all knew it.

She took clients away from brokers to give them to the guys she had hired years before. She was ruthless and downright mean, and probably the worst leader of any company I have ever encountered. BUT she was a woman and Morgan Stanley needed a woman in that capacity. At one point a broker from our office made a comment to her boss when he came in from NYC, he looked right at the broker and said, ?Well, she?s over 50, fat and female, not much we can do to get rid of her now.? She was a miserable person and made everyone around her miserable. She had my original boss, a male, do most of the work, the reports, motivating the staff and updates on regulations and she would take all the credit when visiting with her boss, she did it right in front of us, she made claim to so many things she hardly understood since she obtained her securities license 25 years prior. I don?t like to speak ill of people, but she was truly a thorn in my side and I was not alone.?

One woman who used to work at Barclays said she remembers watching Meryl Streep?s quietly villainous boss in The Devil Wears Prada and just thinking I work for the same exact woman.

?I think in order to get where they are they just have to possess a certain weird quality and they think that by being this way it makes them look powerful. What it mostly does is make people not want to work for them and then make them not want to work for women in general. One of my colleagues said after working with this woman that he never wanted to work for a woman again.?

But is it fair to take these women who have finally stuck it out and made it past the glass ceiling on Wall Street and then tear them down by calling them crazy? Would a man get criticized for doing the same things or would he never feel that he had to do these things because he was a male in a power position? Elle Kaplan, CEO and founding partner of Lexion Capital Management, said:

?This is a clear double standard. As a woman who has always worked on Wall Street we are constantly in a fish bowl.?

According to Professor Mary-Quist Newins academic research reveals that female leaders in male dominated industries are indeed held to a different standard. They are placed in the so-called ?double bind?:

?On one hand, if they take on the leadership style associated with and expected from men (i.e., command and control), the perception is they are overly aggressive, unfeminine (a ?witch? or its rhyming counterpart). On the other, if they are more characteristically feminine in their leadership approach, they are frequently viewed as soft and worse yet, incompetent. Navigating the double bind can present extreme challenges, even for the most gifted leader.

Last, as part of a minority group, women in leadership positions are frequently excluded from both informal (e.g., sports activities, outings) and formal networks (e.g., representation in organizational hierarchy). The implications are that they may not have the opportunity to build social capital that is essential among subordinates, peers or advocates within the enterprise.?

And this isn?t to say that there aren?t women in the financial industry who have succeeded and have reputations as kind and sane managers. Johnson now works for a new female boss, Christie Kelly, in the commercial real estate business and says she has had wonderful experiences:

?As a woman and working in the financial industry, I know it?s a man?s world, and the majority of whom we do business with are men, but she can hold her own with them and doesn?t back down and is not intimidated by them, it?s not easy for her, she has to approach situations differently than a man does, but I think she has it figured out. It?s not easy to land a role such as hers, CFO to a public billion dollar company, but she has and does it well. I honestly don?t know what a male boss in her role could do any better than her, she makes things more personable and softens situations to where I don?t think a male boss could. I have worked for a male boss and he was great in his role, so I don?t know he could bring anything more than what she can to the table.

I have people ask me all the time how I like working for a powerful woman, I always say, I don?t have any issues with it, but I guess it all depends on the woman and her personality. I think some feel in order to keep up with the men they have to be hard, tough and show no compassion or they will be viewed as weak which is so ridiculous because we don?t expect women to be that way and when they are it comes across as a cold hearted bitch.?

Perhaps women can succeed without doing things that may be construed as difficult or crazy but it probably won?t happen anytime soon if we can?t get more women into the executive suite on Wall Street.

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Source: http://thegrindstone.com/strategy/do-successful-women-in-finance-have-a-screw-loose-344/

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