I never like to repeat myself. I was all set to talk about research into digital investment and readiness at global financial firms this week. But the enormous response to my last blog post — Save me from ‘Women in…’ breakfasts, please! — signalled that this was a struck nerve that deserved more attention.
I wanted to set a few things straight before we delve into the, frankly depressing, Sexism in the City report, released by the UK Treasury Committee on March 8 (International Women’s Day, for those who observe).
I am not anti-breakfast. I quite like breakfast. I am also not anti-breakfast meetings (I attended one this week). I am also not anti-IWD or anti women getting together to share war stories or inspirational speeches. As I mentioned in the post, I have attended and spoken at these events in the past. I have seen great women speak.
However, and I apologise if I am repeating myself, I am anti token, performative, “hold hands up in a heart symbol, girl boss Christmas”-type activities. I am anti women talking to other women about what *we* need to fix to “move the needle”. Especially, as we saw from the data last week, not much has changed regarding gender parity, specifically regarding funding for female entrepreneurs.
I am vehemently anti patting women on the head and expecting us to be grateful that we are given sidebar gatherings, before the main start of various events, as the only space to voice these stories, statistics and strategies. These things need to be said in a more varied and central environment in front of the people who run companies, and control venture capital funds.
Most importantly, these things need to be said in front of people who look at data that show female run start-ups get only 2 per cent of global VC capital funding and, not only see nothing wrong, but think the issue lies solely with women. These are the people who are *not* in the IWD choir and who need to be challenged.
Over the course of my career, I have been told, on more than a few occasions, that female founders do not exist. Not that there are few, but that there are none. We all know that is not true and those moments had me feeling like I was speaking to someone who thought the earth was flat. A well-known industry voice made one of the many comments on my post on LinkedIn by saying the key to getting more funding was to “start founding more businesses”. He called this his “simple truth”. I put that view in the “female founders do not exist” bucket.
To all the male VCs out there who do not see the millions of women who start businesses, including tech businesses, ask yourself: is it because these women “do not exist”, or because they see your views on stage or on LinkedIn posts and think “this guy is going to do nothing for me” and therefore do not approach you?
Now for the UK government’s Sexism in the City report — fair warning, I am about to get salty — is a follow up to one published in 2018. It found almost nothing has changed outside of some “incremental improvements for women working in financial services on certain metrics, such as the proportion of women holding senior roles”.
Most damning, the report found that whether issues related to pay, harassment or maternity leave, “it is this cultural deficit that allows them all to persist. Culture is also the most difficult area to seek to reform”.
I agree. Culture eats all your good intentions for dessert, after it’s had its fill of your strategy. Then why, I ask, did the report recommend that “the regulators drop their plans for extensive data reporting and target setting” because “a lack of diversity is a problem that the market itself should be able to solve without such extensive regulatory intervention”. The market has, so far, been unable to solve anything. Did the writers read their own report?
It is the feeling of the UK Treasury committee report that “it must be the responsibility of firms, boards and investors to drive improvements in diversity and inclusion”. However, it goes on to say that “we heard that many firm-level initiatives aimed at improving diversity and inclusion were often not treated in the same way as other core business priorities”. The committee needed a once-every-five-years, government-sponsored report to tell us this?
As I mentioned last week, I’m tired. I want to go back to writing about quantum resilience and embedded payments. But as you saw from the response to my post last week, many women are also fed up and tired of being condescended to and marginalised. The ideas and leaders we need to enact real change shouldn’t be segregated to the breakfast buffet table preaching to the “Women in…” IWD choir.
Liz is deputy editor of The Banker. You can connect with Liz on LinkedIn, or follow her on Bluesky.
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