Why the Funds Industry Needs Its Own 30% Club
Getting more women into asset management is going nowhere. Large investors, such as pensions, can spearhead change.
Apply the gender lens.
Photographer: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP
The asset management industry has a serious gender problem. The number of women managing funds has virtually stagnated in recent years. One way to start fixing this is for large investors to demand that more diverse teams manage their money.
The share of women overseeing funds has risen less than two percentage points since 2016 when Citywire — with a database of about 18,000 active managers — began publishing on gender in the industry. It rose a paltry 0.1 percentage point to 12.1% in the past 12 months, according to the latest report released in September. Even more worrying, the number of funds run by sole female managers dropped from 1,508 to 1,490, a record low. In contrast, those managed by single male managers went up from 12,659 to 13,110, a 4% increase.