QuoteOriginally posted by: xiaoxue1211Does the obvious small ratio of female quants leads to females' easier entrance into the quant career which is very unbalanced regarding to gender?For example, with the same quality, the company may tend to hire the female applicant than the male applicant?(I am a female PhD student interested in a quant career and that's why I ask this question. Sorry if this question offends guy quants here..)There are women doing quant work at many different companies. For some reason most of them seem to be Asian. The Quant Community in general seems to be accepting of women, same goes for the larger Applied Math community as well. I think most of the condensing attitudes towards women stem from the Pure Math community. The Trading community also has a history of being unfriendly to women.So if a woman is a Front Office Quant that deals directly with Traders, she might be in for a rough time.

QuoteOriginally posted by: AnalyticalVegaThe Trading community also has a history of being unfriendly to women.So if a woman is a Front Office Quant that deals directly with Traders, she might be in for a rough time.Are you speaking from experience or just from stories? I think the situation may be better in the industry now a days than in the past.I haven't noticed this being an issue at all where I work, the ratio for women to men is also better among our traders than quants (25% vs 15%). But obviously my experience is a sample of one.

"I haven't noticed this being an issue at all where I work."No offence, but discrimination is one of these things which is much harder to notice unless it's directed at you.

QuoteOriginally posted by: katastrofa"I haven't noticed this being an issue at all where I work."No offence, but discrimination is one of these things which is much harder to notice unless it's directed at you.Very valid point.

QuoteOriginally posted by: HansiI haven't noticed this being an issue at all where I work, the ratio for women to men is also better among our traders than quants (25% vs 15%). But obviously my experience is a sample of one.I confirm. There are many female traders, there are many female quants... well developers in MO, there are very few female quants in FO. It's not about abuse of women.

QuoteOriginally posted by: katastrofa"I haven't noticed this being an issue at all where I work."No offence, but discrimination is one of these things which is much harder to notice unless it's directed at you.True, unless you find yourself on the right side right after being on the wrong side. Been in that situation once and was talking to a White colleague on her last day at work and "she" told me - "You will flourish here, you have the right skills, right age, right sex and most importantly the right race". I had already figured this out so there was nothing I could or wanted to say.

@capafan2Japanese bank?

Asian female quants dominated the female side? I find it quite unbelievable.

QuoteOriginally posted by: katastrofa@capafan2Japanese bank? ;-)capafan used to be at GS in NY...

QuoteOriginally posted by: GamalQuoteOriginally posted by: HansiI haven't noticed this being an issue at all where I work, the ratio for women to men is also better among our traders than quants (25% vs 15%). But obviously my experience is a sample of one.I confirm. There are many female traders, there are many female quants... well developers in MO, there are very few female quants in FO. It's not about abuse of women.My estimate is that here the male-to-female ratio is about 50 to 1.

It's a complex picture, female quants are far more often to be found in the less good jobs and it may not shock anyone to learn that the attrition rate is harsh.A big problem is that the average level of programming skill in female quants is of a different order to that of males.Note I say skill not innate talent, it may be that women are born as good as men at programming, for all I know they may on average be better but if you don't bother to pick up a compiler and beat it into submission, no one will ever know, western European white girls do themselves no favours at all by disdaining code more than women in general.There are exceptions, but we shouldn't even try to care about them in this context, When you are saying X% of a population that is tens of thousands large, saying "I've met several women who were very good" is simply irrelevant. But as I say its complex...The set of men who ask "are there quant jobs where I don't have to program ?" is far higher, even allowing for the fact that there are more men. I can't explain this, I merely report it.The programming thing is fixable, if you're smart enough to be a quant then you can learn to code, you may not be a star, but you can get there.

QuoteNote I say skill not innate talent, it may be that women are born as good as men at programming, for all I know they may on average be better but if you don't bother to pick up a compiler and beat it into submission, no one will ever know, western European white girls do themselves no favours at all by disdaining code more than women in general.Southern Europe has more female quants, CS and maths. N+W Europe is quite old-fashioned in this regard.And my impression of female Chinese and other Asian female C++ students is very positive. They beat the compiler into submission, indeed! Sometimes people approach C++ in a more philosophical/cerebral way.

QuoteOriginally posted by: DevonFangsQuoteOriginally posted by: GamalQuoteOriginally posted by: HansiI haven't noticed this being an issue at all where I work, the ratio for women to men is also better among our traders than quants (25% vs 15%). But obviously my experience is a sample of one.I confirm. There are many female traders, there are many female quants... well developers in MO, there are very few female quants in FO. It's not about abuse of women.My estimate is that here the male-to-female ratio is about 50 to 1.Or even worse. How many FO quants could I know? Not more than 100, among them there is only only girl, which I did interview some years ago. She didn't get the job. Im MO we've got just now 12 male quants/developers and 4 female.