One of the best parts of my role at FT Adviser is our regular series New Voices where we speak to a variety of advisers and people associated with the advice profession from all over the country.
In this series, I have spoken to a lot of female advisers, many of whom discuss issues that they believe specifically affect advisers who are women, be they currently in the industry or simply considering a career in the future.
I always find their insights fascinating and I hope that the majority of readers do as well, but something that has been troubling me recently is the comments from some readers rejecting the points advisers are making.
In a recent edition of New Voices I was quite troubled by some of the comments stating things like: "I switched off and stopped reading when it turned to ‘gender representation’”, and: “Where is this ‘never ending issue of visibility in the industry’? There are no barriers to entry for anyone.”
This is not an isolated incident either as I have noticed similar sentiments being shared whenever the idea of gendered initiative for advisers is raised in a New Voices article.
I can somewhat understand the point being made behind these sentiments, after all there is nothing specifically preventing women from becoming involved in the financial advice sector, in fact there are many initiatives designed to specifically appeal to them.
Additionally, if you believe that this isn’t an issue, then hearing about it every two weeks in FT Adviser must be quite exhausting, but this I feel is the key point that underpins the argument, this is an issue.
Despite many different forms of outreach designed specifically to encourage female advisers, women are disproportionately unrepresented in the financial advice profession, with just 16 per cent of financial advisers being female, according to the Financial Conduct Authority.
This should really prompt questions from advisers, if accessibility isn’t the issue, why is there such a gendered gap?
Some of the female participants who have been featured in New Voices identify a lack of representation as one such reason as, simply put, while there are a lot of women in the financial advice space, they are not quite as visible as their male counterparts.
This doesn’t seem controversial to me as, across our industry, boards are dominated by men, men speak the most at conferences, and most of the comments I have flooding my inbox on any given day come from men.
They have indicated that this has caused doubts in their suitability in the industry, making them ask if this is the right place for them and putting some women off.
Encouraging women into the financial advice profession is not the only issue that has garnered pushback from readers as the idea that women struggle to fit into the industry after deciding it is the career they want to pursue.
