The proportion of ladies holding senior positions at European hedge funds has greater than halved since 2021, in response to a report on Wednesday by knowledge supplier Preqin.
Commenting on the report, Megan Tobias Neely, a former hedge fund analyst, educational and writer of “Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Avenue”, mentioned the COVID pandemic and upheaval in markets had seen the business fall again on outdated habits.
“Any notion of instability and other people rely extra on shut ties of their community. Throughout unsure instances, folks do enterprise extra with individuals who appear to be them,” she informed Reuters in an interview.
“Males will do enterprise with males, networks grow to be segregated racially and when it comes to nationality.”
The proportion of ladies holding normal and restricted accomplice roles in hedge funds in Europe has fallen to simply 8% in 2023 from 17.4% in 2021, in response to Preqin knowledge.
The proportion of ladies within the hedge fund business elsewhere on this planet has dropped too, to 16.30% from 18.8% in North America, and to 18.9% from 21.2% in Asia over the identical interval.
Of the ten international locations with the best share of ladies holding senior positions at hedge funds, Hong Kong comes prime with 17.3%, whereas Brazil has the bottom proportion, with 7%.
The US ranks fifth, with 12.9%, behind Hong Kong, Bermuda, France and Canada. Roughly 12% of UK hedge fund staff are girls, in response to the info.
“When girls within the business have interaction in the identical social behaviour as males and act aggressively, and that is one thing that’s prided on, they get push-back,” Tobias Neely mentioned, including one of many challenges for ladies and other people of color working within the hedge fund business was that they’re perceived as riskier than their white male counterparts.
This yr, girls nonetheless make up solely 21.3% of the general variety of staff working in any respect ranges within the various investments business, which incorporates personal fairness, enterprise capital, personal debt, actual property, infrastructure and pure assets, the report confirmed.
Supply: Reuters
