Is the Irish Financial Services industry male-dominated?

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Interesting topic! The industry is very male dominated, seminars held by insurance companies tend to only have what has been referred to as "token females". Actually, one seminar I was at, I won't mention the company, anyway, it was a breakfast seminar and there was only one female attendee. She went to pick up her briefcase which she had placed under the table (stand-up breakfast seminar) as the presentation was about to commence in another room. A male attendee handed her his plate and said, are you knocking off now. She promptly replied, "I think I will go into the seminar to see what it is all about!" he really did not even pay any attention but when he saw her sitting in the room and particularly asking questions, he was mortified!! He just assumed that she was one of the catering staff.
 

I agree with Sherman, that has to be the biggest load of horse manure I've heard in a long time. (No offence intended!)
 
Cahir said:
but mostly it's a disadvantage as the men tend to group together and ignore you/treat you differently.
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I resent comments like this. "Grouping together" and ignoring people can and does in my experience work both ways.

In my last job, technology, the split of male/female was approximately 50/50. Yet before I left, it was more of the male members of staff that I was familiar with rather than the female.
In general, the female members of staff were cool, frosty, and unwilling to engage in any normal workplace chat. And this wasn't just me, having started on the same day as another female, she experienced the same thing.

In my new job now, sitting around me now, there is a 60/40 male/female split, and already, I can see the "closed shop" that the females have created in this small team (10 people).

The only occasion that 2 of the females deigned to speak with me, the newbie, they were very clear up front that they had boyfriends (which came up in conversations which had nothing to do with anything outside of working for the company).

What does their having boyfriends have to do with me integrating into the company, other than having me think now (based on their own actions) that they're stuck up cows who think that they're so beautiful that everyone must be interested in them.
 
ronan_d_john said:
I resent comments like this. "Grouping together" and ignoring people can and does in my experience work both ways.
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Thats just been my experience quite a number of times when I've been the only female at a function. Again, in my own experience, the few females in my industry don't group together - some of the older ones seem to resent new females who arrive on the scene. The most recent experience I have of being left out was on a course with about 13 men where very few people knew each other before the course. The men were reluctant to sit next to me at the start of the course or at lunch time and I was never included in conversations, even when I tried to contribute. I mentioned this to other females in the industry and they've found the same. I'm not sure if it was a gender thing or an age thing as they were all significantly older than me.

Unfortunately in work my office is near the photocopier room and very often men come in and ask me, quite rudely, for more paper or the code for the machine -assuming I work in admin (despite the title of Engineer on my door!).
 
You should just politely suggest that they ask one of the 'lads in admin', and then look away and continue working!

Mind you, I would agree that clubbiness/exclusionist and other hostile tactics in the workplace are certainly not the sole preserve of men. Nor is bullying/harassment from people in positions of power.
 
Cahir said:
Unfortunately in work my office is near the photocopier room and very often men come in and ask me, quite rudely, for more paper or the code for the machine -assuming I work in admin (despite the title of Engineer on my door!).
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You're correct. They should ask more politely!
 
That's a somewhat dog-in-a-manger attitude isn't it? Who are you to judge someone who has decided to prioritise their lives differently in terms of work/life balance? If someone wants to dedicate more of the time to earning money, why resent them for it? I took a extra unpaid holidays last year and lost some income as a result. Wouldn't it be pretty ridiculous for me to expect to be paid as much as someone who worked the whole year? What is wrong with people making a life choice to shift some of their energies away from working (e.g. to dedicate more of their time for family, socialising with friends, playing golf, travelling the world for a year, learning Spanish, etc.) and living with the consequence of less renumeration as a result? Or the converse; someone decides to forgo such pleasures and work every hour possible in order to earn more money?
 
Hi darag, my response was a dig at Podgerodges assumption that women with children spend half their day working and the other half thinking about their children. My point was tongue in cheek, and I was attempting to point out that almost every body has personal relationships which could be said to interfere with their work- some people without children are married, some are in the process of divorce, some are coping with bereavement, some are starry eyed in love. So do we analyse whether or not all of the aforementioned are thinking about their work 100% of the time? Do all women with children really think about their children 50% of the time at work? Do people without children automatically spend 100% of their time at work focussed on their work?
 
Vanilla said:
Hi darag, my response was a dig at Podgerodges assumption that women with children spend half their day working and the other half thinking about their children.
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Don't worry, I knew it was a dig! Darag - you really must try to read behind the lines in statements like that!!

However, what I actually meant by "the other half thinking about their children" was that they work less hours cos they are at home, not that they are dossing while they are actually at work. Only some women do that !
 
Obviously some people here spend half the workday thinking about askaboutmoney, never mind thinking about the children!
 
I work in accounting & have never noticed any sort of descrimination.
I think that it is a fact of life that if you take time out to have babies etc that you will fall behind in the career ladder & that is up to each individual to decide if its worth it & also that the majority of women generally put career second once kids come along & that this contributes to more men being at the top of the ladder. Men seem to be able to separate home life from work life a lot better than women.
I don't buy into the whole idea that there should be 50:50 balance in every working situation. I think that the main thing is that people doing the same job get the same pay.
 
I've experienced both - boy's clubs and frosty unfriendly women . . .I think it's more down to corporate culture than anything. It doesn't excuse people though, everyone has a choice how to behave when it comes to something like that.
 
>>Men seem to be able to separate home life from work life a lot better than women.<<

Probably because they have a wife/partner who is worrying about the kids/housework for them. I know that's a prejudiced thing to say and I know couples this doesn't apply to, but I do think it's a factor.

I don't have kids and don't really know a thing about it, but I agree with giving more paternity leave and moving towards equalising things more at home, thus giving women a more equal chance in the workplace to move into higher positions.

If women give up on their careers because of babies, we will end up with even less women in positions of power and influence and that to me is not progress.
 

Well said, discrimination only applies when people doing the same job don't get the same pay and I think that has largely disappeared.

annR said:
If women give up on their careers because of babies, we will end up with even less women in positions of power and influence.
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They had a choice whether to have babies or not. Women that don't have babies are rising up the corporate ladder as quickly as men in my experience. There is no conspiracy. You can't have babies and a high powered career unless you work and the man stays at home. If that happens fine, the man will lose out on his career. So there is no discrimination. Just reality.

By the way, why is it that equal representation always has to be at the top of the ladder, I never hear a complaint that it's nearly always men cleaning the streets etc.
 
podgerodge said:
discrimination only applies when people doing the same job don't get the same pay
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Strictly speaking, this isn't correct.

There are more facets to how discrimination can expose itself in the workplace, and pay is just one of them.

It may be that it's the most common one, but I don't know.
 
Of course there are other forms of discrimination. I was only referring to the types surrounding equal work equal pay.
 
podgerodge said:
I agree with Sherman, that has to be the biggest load of horse manure I've heard in a long time. (No offence intended!)
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No offence taken. Diversity is important. I'm not claiming some simplistic mantra that parents are always better/smarter than non-parents. I'm stating that a team consisting solely of go-getting 30-somethings with no family ties is not a great idea, as once the team start hitting 35 & the kiddies start arriving, the team will implode.
 
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