Why do you think there aren’t currently many women in the industry?
This is a complex issue that I have spent a lot of time thinking about. Private equity is a great career for women and it makes eminent sense for an industry that is investing in a diverse range of businesses to have meaningful input from both genders.
I think the issue likely starts as early as school with significantly fewer girls studying subjects like economics that naturally feed into degrees like commerce. This means that the feeder professions of finance and consulting have traditionally had fewer females in their graduate intakes. I understand the balance is starting to shift now, but when I joined investment banking there were significantly more men than women in graduate intakes.
Private equity typically recruits candidates who already have several years of experience and who often will have sought out opportunities either via their networks or recruiters. We often use recruiters and the CVs presented are taken from the traditional feeder professions mentioned earlier, which means we receive very few female CVs.
I believe there are fewer female candidates who are aware of, or view, private equity as a viable career option in part due to the fact that there have only been a handful of female role models in senior positions in the industry. In addition, if female candidates have not been exposed to private equity by, for example working in the Sponsors team of an investment bank, they may not be aware of it as a career option. AVCAL’s diversity initiatives are a great way to boost the profile of the industry for potential female recruits, and we can also thank a group of senior female role models who have been very active in promoting and helping women in the industry.
Firms can take proactive steps, for example, by asking recruiters to actively seek out and present a certain number of female CVs to ensure the feeder pools are properly tapped. These pools now have talented and qualified female candidates who may not have actively sought out private equity roles due to the reasons mentioned earlier, but they are there if you look for them.