Where are the women at?

Amalgam's attendance at the Society of Chartered Financial Analysts Minnesota Career and Professional Development Day proved an interesting change of scene and a window into the world of our client, McGovern Executive Search. Our take-away question from the event: Where are the women at?

The handful of women CFA members who attended huddled together during the networking sessions, taking me back to my middle school dance days. When I asked, they told me that women are progressing in the industry: two generations ago, there were no women; in the '80s, when women began to enter the industry, they were utterly ignored; today, they are merely undervalued. Investment by and large is still a man's world, they said, in a tone that was less complaint than rallying cry. Maren Amdal, CFA Minnesota's dynamic young Executive Director, told us her organization's membership is 80/20, men/women.

Now, back to our previous blog post about market risk: Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner is out there trying to sell the virtues of taking less risk to a fraternity of aggressive, Type A analysts and investors. Our new theory, backed by CFA's own research, is that women tend to invest more conservatively than men. They're less likely to "bet the farm" on speculation. Thus, getting more women into the investment industry -- and into the elite credential that CFA confers -- would reduce the aggregate risk pursued by the investment industry.

What would a concerted strategy of marketing to women deliver for organizations like CFA Minnesota? A real opportunity to affect change in the current economy.