The Connection Between Gender and Wall Street's Woes

The Washington Post ran an article written by Debora Spar entitled, "One Gender Crash." Spar reasons that the recent events on Wall Street, reveal a great deal about the gender gap in the finance industry. Spar says,

"One might argue, of course, that the preponderance of men behaving badly on Wall Street is just a mathematical corollary of the preponderance of men doing anything on Wall Street. But the truth is more complicated. Although the Y-chromosome is undeniably overrepresented along all tiers of finance, it is particularly overrepresented at the highest levels of power and in those sectors most deeply implicated in the current crisis. A Catalyst Research study last year found that women make up almost 60 percent of the workforce at Fortune 500 finance and insurance companies but account for only 17.9 percent of corporate officer positions and none of the chief executive positions. In the world of hedge funds, women are notable largely for their absence."

Read the entire article, which we'll use to inform our Learning Circle dialogues, here.