What it’s like to be something other than white and male in the hedge fund business

Business Insider

The money management industry has a diversity problem.

Morningstar’s global study out earlier this year showed that one in five mutual fund managers is a woman – a rate that hasn’t budged since 2008.

In the US, that number drops to one in 10. The US is a laggard, far behind countries like Singapore (30%), Portugal (28%) and France (21%).

For hedge funds, the numbers are similar: only 15% of hedge fund CEOs are women. For minorities, the figures are just as lackluster, with only a handful of Latino and African-American managers.

There are a lot of reasons for the gap – among them, biases, cliquey hiring, and weaker professional networks for women.

Given the dire numbers, I wondered what it’s like to be a woman, minority – or both – working in the industry. So I started asking around.

Some spoke of annoying biases – one woman who launched her own fund said she stopped wearing her wedding ring at investor meetings because she grew tired of questions about what her husband did. Others spoke of being ignored for the investment ideas they presented, or hearing crass talk about female colleagues.

Most said their experiences had, on the whole, been otherwise positive. Investing proves a quantifiable measure on which to be measured, something other careers lack, several people mentioned. There are fewer gray areas on which to be measured, the thinking goes, if you can point to a number that proves your performance for the year.

Everyone asked to be kept anonymous so to not jeopardize their careers. Here are their stories.