Wall Street may be finding new ways to perpetuate the old boys’ club

BACK IN THE 1980s, Tom Wolfe described Wall Street traders as “masters of the universe”. Over the past three decades, they seem to have turned into the equivalent of what Robert Burns called “wee, sleekit, cowran, tim’rous beasties”. The cause of the funk? Women.

A recent story from Bloomberg, a news provider, based on interviews with 30 executives, revealed that some of the titans of finance are avoiding one-on-one meetings with women, sitting next to them on flights or having dinner with them alone. The #MeToo movement, which started with rape accusations against Harvey Weinstein, a Hollywood producer, and which has spread to most industries, has caused many men to fear being accused of behaving improperly.

Responding as the financiers reportedly are is worrying on all sorts of levels. Either the men concerned do not know how to behave properly, or they think the female half of the population has nothing better to do than to make up false allegations of sexual harassment. On the latter point, think of the difficulties that accusers face in terms of the damage to their career prospects or the difficulty in getting compensation. These may have lightened owing to #MeToo and the support for women generated by the cause, but the risks involved are still huge. Who would needlessly put themselves through such an ordeal?

Men who take the view that females, especially young, attractive ones, are best avoided at work, may end up excluding them from career opportunities and failing to mentor them. They might even refuse to hire them in the first place. That could land their employers with sex-discrimination lawsuits, but in truth there is plenty of room to turn a cold shoulder with few consequences.

Since men dominate the upper echelons of finance, this gives them an excuse to perpetuate the old boys’ club. Rather than change their behaviour, they pretend that it is women, not men, who create the risk. Instead of an inconvenient truth, this is a convenient lie.

Part of the problem is that men systematically underestimate the problems that women face inside the office and out. A new Ipsos Mori survey found that American men believed that 44% of women had suffered sexual harassment at some point in their lives, for example, while the actual proportion was 81%.

Some of the behavioural changes that are occurring on Wall Street might be perfectly sensible in their own right. Earlier this year, this column proposed Bartleby’s Law that “80% of the time of 80% of the people in meetings is wasted.” Work-related dinners are another waste of time; their chief purpose is usually to eat and drink at someone else’s expense. It is hard to find any good reason to have a meeting with a colleague over dinner, of either sex, that could not be achieved over a coffee, for much less time and expense.

Holding a meeting with the door open, as some male managers now practice, is acceptable, provided it is done for all employees. Glass-fronted offices are another option to ensure “literal” transparency. In practice, the main benefit of these changes will usually be protection for the women not the men. Other precautions are simply common sense. Asking a subordinate staff member on a date is out of the question. If Wall Street professionals cannot work this out for themselves, they are not smart enough to be handling other people’s money.

But avoiding unwanted advances is the very least women should expect. A broader question is how to make it easier for them to achieve success in male-dominated sectors like finance. A study* by two Columbia Business School academics compared two approaches. One was to emphasise gender differences, and to celebrate perceived female qualities of warmth and sensitivity. The other was “gender blindness” which downplays differences between the sexes. They found the former approach reduces people to a stereotype and sends women into a limited range of roles, such as human resources. Gender blindness was far more effective in increasing female confidence, while (unsurprisingly) having little effect on men.

So the lesson to Wall Street leaders is “get a grip”. Do not think of those other people in your offices as men or women. They are colleagues.

^{* What “blindness” to gender differences helps women see and do: Implications for confidence, agency and action in male-dominated environments by Ashley E Martin and Katherine W Phillips}