I do not think women in finance are rare. I think you guys just do not know any because you are sitting at home on your computer. I also know a lot of women day traders. There are a lot of female brokers for sure. Perhaps they do not have time to post on ET. They have more important things to do. Like paint their toenails.
How do they get along ? When I used to be in real estate, I could see that older women gave younger ones hard time , really mean way . I used to call it " silent cat fight " Walter
How you been? Heard you moved to SB; where at? That will make it easier to have lunch. Did you really get into the video business?
Then I would suggest 1. that anecdotal observations cannot be held as proof because that's like saying everyone I saw today was wearing blue pants, therefore everyone in other places was wearing blue pants, and 2. Surveys are typically meaningless because the sampling is inherently limited and the results could be biased. That's not to say that your conclusions are necessarily incorrect. If indeed there is statistically fewer female traders than in other finance positions, and 'finance positions' is a wide encompassing term that does not necessarily include trading, it could very well be that the majority of females (and males) interested in those 'finance' career paths find an array of particular attributes in those positions more desirable or beneficial; they may not have ever considered trading; they have been exposed to certain other aspects of the finance industry, their proximity to those businesses, their education, among who knows how many other variables, but what I would not think is the touchstone is the fact that they're female or that they're wired that way from the stone age experience. My 2 cents. I wonder what people back in the stone age used to cite as the cause for the way they were wired: Neanderthal say: "Back when we were single cell organisms floating in the organic pool, some of us were wired to hunt down the food particles amidst the flotsam and jetsam, and that translated down to my livelihood today."?
It seems to me our society has made many people afraid to say or speak the truth. Women on the whole are very poorly represented in the trading ranks. When you see the trading rooms on MTV, I mean CNBC what do you see. Lots of women? The pits in chicago. Women? Nah. When I was walking around the CBOE I commented on the fact (when I was single) that there were very few women around but many of the ones that were there were quite good looking. A old timer said check out the size of or the rocks on their hands. Then he said thats the spread. Still do not know how many different ways he meant that, but it did seem to have at least a double meaning. Now how many women would want to physically fight it out in the pit. How many even want to trade. How many do you see playing the world series of poker on ESPN or the World Poker tour. How many women want to compete in college athletics. (more but a much lower percentage than men) When I was single and I told women I traded for a living, almost everyone thought I was a stock broker. Trading is not something that appeals to lots of women. We are just wired differently. I am sure the most of the women that do pick up trading are the ones that had aggressive brothers or were very competitive in sports or cards or chess or something strategic. P.S. on futher reflection about this I remember seeing a nova type thing about women and gambling and they showed that women gravitated to the video poker as opposed to the gaming tables. Perhaps this is true and may explain why they are underrepresented in the large forums.
It is no surprise that there are not many women trading on the trading floors of big firms. Lets face it, how many women are prepared to put up with the constant verbal (and sometimes sexual - yes it happens too frequently still!) harrassment of a bunch of testosterone-hyped Arseholes! (Not all the men, but a sufficiently large number put themselves in that category...) - Only to have their own career (the women that is) stopped dead if they complain about any illegal physical abuses... It is a very poor indictment on the men that there are so few women in the big firms. The internet age has made trading your own account very accessible, and now there are large numbers of women who do trade their own accounts, not least since it fits in with all their other family/household responsibilities and affords a flexibility that few other occupations can. Women are in my experience far more financially astute and responsible than men, and while they may not be the superstars who pick up the big wins, they tend to be very consistent indeed in their earnings. I know many women who trade, and only a very few are not consistently profitable... Best Natalie