On my Blog I mention my experience at a careers, event where the women just disappeared.Following my normal policy of nihilistic levels of honesty, I will confess that I have no idea what's going on, and my ignorance goes down several levels.The IAFE set up a panel of people like our own Peter Jaeckel who know a lot about this game, and let students ask them questions.This was not just an opportunity to learn very useful stuff, but also impress the great and the good, and one Cass guy asked a question good enough that one of the panel asked him for contact details.In any market conditions that is good, but today it's probably the most useful thing he did this year.Did girls ask questions ?No.Yeah, I said "girls".Political correctness says that I'm supposed to say "women" when talking of females, all of who were at least 22, some of who were in their 30s.But I saw passive girly behaviour, and it does not impress me.About 1/6 to 1/7 of the people in the lecture theatre were female.There were free drinks afterwards, Almost all the girls disappeared.Maybe they got a better offer, but I somehow doubt it.They missed the opportunity to learn stuff that will notably affect their careers, to make contacts, and practice the craft of networking.Their loss.Actually mine as well, but it hurt them more than me.Two of the remaining girls, chatted to each other, then left.One sat in the corner looking at her watch, waiting for it to end. Being a networker as part of my work, I tried and failed to engage her in conversation.Maybe, she thought I was trying to pick her up, but I'm an overweight grey haired 47 year old bloke, I have no illusions about sweeping 22yos girls off their feet.Ok, I was wearing an nice cashmere/silk scarf, and my normal Thomas Pink shirt, but no one mistakes me for George Clooney.Also I had a name tag that said "Dominic Connor P&D Quant Recruitment", which ought to be a clue of why I was talking to her.She failed a very basic intelligence test. That sounds arrogant, but if you are looking for a job in a less than perfect market, and a well known pimp engages you in conversation, how rational is it to wimp out ?IAFE was smart enough to ensure that one quant was female, so there was no excuse not to network with her her at least.This problem does not stop at student events. Finance focuses show the same effect, but it took me a while to notice because very few even turn up in the first place.The numbers of females is of course small, but the number at networking events is smaller still.To be fair there were a few women who took full advantage of the event, one was trying particularly hard to change careers, and got some very useful info from the HSBC quant about her particular skills could be used.So it can be done.I find it hard to believe that in the 21st century, girls are still acting like maidens from the 1920s who were allowed to work but never went into "men-only" professions, and kept their heads down.Yes, there's shit in society for women even now, but quantish types are about the best behaved around women of any group I've ever encountered, so I reject that set of excuses directly.So what am I missing here ?

My feeling is that although we are trying our best to welcome women into more quanty type professions. The heard effect is well and truly there. Those with similar personalities tend to stick with each other - i.e. extroverts with extroverts etc. Perhaps have a female recruiter for quants might help going forward?Stats Guy

You do point to an interesting topic... but I am not too sure I understand your astonishment.. there could be all sorts of reasons for which they left (tired/bored/understood they wanted something else from life whatever).... I did not read your blog.. so sorry i do not know what event and the whereabouts.. what I feel from a woman/girl's side ( ps I actually prefer "girls" to "women"..) is that it is extremely difficult to be a "female with quantitative attributes".. ( I was naive .. I first thought I was "a quantitatively trained person with female attributes" the order of words turned out being important, crucial..) The dominant group is and remains male... with male habits (beer, fun jokes about bimbos.. ect..) It is quite difficult to relate to that having more oestrogens than testosterone by construction... this is not a question of being prudish, but one isn't necessarily interested in B&B (Beer and Bimbos)... so it is quite a lonesome path somehow... I have spent my career being the "one not male" in the audience..and this is sad...And somehow your opinion will never be held as very serious if it is not "confirmed" by that of a quantitative person with male attributes..At some point this constant patronizing becomes utterly annoying... I am not sure how many place really mean it to make themselves attractive to women, or say at least genderless...there remains still much to be done.p.s. I went to your blog.. I have a lifetime staying at the afterparties.. and they end up quite often in B&B... so not clear.. whether the incentives are good enough... some men definitely also need to learn how to talk to women...But at the end of the day you are right.. networking is important... and women have different ways of networking... not necessarily sit in a pub and drink a beer.. I can point you to the charming and deeper than at first sight film Legally Blonde 2 the heroin has a very good indeed network that functions, but is based on beauty parlor and the like places ...

QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFCBut I saw passive girly behaviourso did I !oh wait, that was youQuoteThere were free drinks afterwards, Almost all the girls disappeared.chicks don't need free drinks, they can get that anywhere QuoteMaybe, she thought I was trying to pick her up, but I'm an overweight grey haired 47 year old blokeexactly, that's why she fled screaming

Are you sure that your "sample" was representative?

Polysena,I think you are shooting the messenger.

QuoteOriginally posted by: PolysenaI can point you to the charming and deeper than at first sight film Legally Blonde 2 the heroin has a very good indeed network that functions, but is based on beauty parlor and the like places ... :-)indeed.Completely off-topic, but a while back, I noticed that in some places "heroine" was being replaced by "shero", perhaps because of the drug heroin.

QuoteOriginally posted by: Polysenaand women have different ways of networking... not necessarily sit in a pub and drink a beer.. "beer" thing's a stereotype. not all men drink beer. i don't, for instance. i also don't like to "sit" in the pub. it's tiring. i'd rather get a few drinks, and go to a club, or to bed

@DCFC: Actually after one understands how important networking is, he also gets that career events are hardly the best place for working on it (while they're still of some value for general market information to elaborate on). Girls know better imho.I've never had problems at all with finding a decent number of talkative gals at quant conferences, where the atmosphere is much more relaxed... and have witnessed a couple of darn good contacts built that way (well for a girl it's much easier ok).Secondly you should also look at how active are quant gals on web social networking i.e. or at when they organize events Donno what that brings in the end, but definitely they're not so passive.Personally wouldnt blame'm at all for what you report, on the contrary, seems atleast half* of the population is either not fundamentally narrowly targeted or is significantly more sophisticated in that (the hypotesis where they might achieve this mostly through instinct and random irrationality is another story..).(note: i might have unduly extrapolated to finance career events from those in the area i came from, but that proved to work well in practice... my worst fin job came while being actively sought after, the best one instead evolved gracefully from a previous collaboration).QuoteCompletely off-topic, but a while back, I noticed that in some places "heroine" was being replaced by "shero", perhaps because of the drug heroin.Such perversions should be punished through death in modern countries... are we entering a dark age? edit: * obviously it's not "half" in this case, but so sounds better

There is a 'Careers Forum' "How Female Quants are Doing?" that discusses this.

I have a couple of thoughts on this, but still more questions.One thing I would wonder is what field the women in question were in previously. Let's say there's a substantial amount of people in physics, mathematics, or computer science who decide that QF sounds more interesting or lucrative than what they're doing now, and let's say it's reasonably possible that the women in question were physics grad students before, or software engineers. This is borne out by my observations of the people going into QF masters programs. These are not exactly stereotypical female careers either, so it raises more questions, like how did they manage to get this far.I would say one possibility for why they didn't want to ask questions, is that in some corporate cultures, asking a question is an admission of incompetence/ignorance. It sounds like fear of being seen as weak, to me.I flipped through a book once at the library, _Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences_, which had a chapter on women as well as one on other minorities, and some quotes from people leaving a math/science/engineering major. And one thing I found interesting in the chapter on women, was a significant intimidation factor, even among people who were performing as well as their male colleagues, because they didn't already know everything, and there was a sense that everyone around them did. And the argument was that feeling like they didn't know what was going on was making them drop their major. I thought this was an interesting perspective although I don't know how true it is.It's an odd behavior DCFC observed, however; I would have thought women would be better at networking, and I especially would think that a woman who managed all the male-dominated mathematics courses in QF would not be so shy.

Quotea woman who managed all the male-dominated mathematics courses in QF would not be so shy.I don't know... I kind of resent this. Mathematics is political-neutral, gender-neutral, race-neutral etc. etc...One can understand Ito's lemma or may not; whether they wear a kilt or a skirt is irrelevant.It is whether one is a decent mathematician or not, that matters.Do women feel intimidated by courses in sciences including physics and maths? Do they feel intimidated working in a bank?I personally studied with a few brilliant girls whose brain power was multiples of mine so I reject immediately the argument that they are male subjects. If (and I doubt it) male (or female) fields exist, I don't believe maths is one of those.You mentioned an interesting idea: Quotethat feeling like they didn't know what was going on was making them drop their majorSo it could be due to self-confidence. As myself I often do things even when I am not confident I can succeed. Often I take risks: I tried jobs I didn't know if I could succeed doing, the main reason for doing a major in maths was that I feared I wouldn't have been able to finish it (and I didn't want to remain with the doubt and with the inferiority complex for all my life), etc. In general I actually look for situations where I am outside my confidence zone because it is what pushes me to improve.Is the female mind engineered not to take on this kind of challenges and retreat from them?I hope there are some psycologist in the forum to tell me what is the answer, but if it is the case, there is a sociological phenomena that I find curious and annoying. On the one hand some females claim that the difficulties arise because they have to work in a male based environment and therefore biased against them. My theory is that the environment is what it is. If it is a risky environment and where you have to be agressive it is not because it is full of sciovinistic male pigs as femminists say. It's because the environment demands those characteristics if you are bound to survive. Maybe men enjoy that kind of thrill more than women. Or more likely some women like the excuse of being in a "men's world" to justify their lack of skills.On the other hand, you have all this "new" men, who won't think twice about humiliating and bully a male colleauge who fails, while they would justify the difficulties of a female colleague because of the "assumed" gender bias.To cut to conclusions: Dominic writes:QuoteYes, there's shit in society for women even now, but quantish types are about the best behaved around women of any group I've ever encountered, so I reject that set of excuses directly.So what am I missing here ?I think that what we are missing here is that many women love to feel victims. And they would prefer to enter in a bank, feel frustrated, misunderstood and grow resentment against the "environment" instead of start fighting which is what most of the men do all the time.As a man I don't like it either; it would be nice if the world was a better place; but it isn't. So if we struggle and need to suck it up, we tend to blame only ourselves. gcP.S. I had doubts about the last sentence: "we tend to blame only ourselves". It seems to me that more and more men are now discovering that it's easier to blame the society rather than roll their sleeves up and start fighting. This seems to be happening more and more with some ethnical or religious communities who having the same chances as the so called mainstream, still like to blame on discrimination the reasons for their failures. Looks somehow similar to femminism to me...

>>Polysena,>>I think you are shooting the messenger.Why? I am not sure I understand anyhow was not my purpose.

>>There is a 'Careers Forum' "How Female Quants are Doing?" that discusses this.where could give a link?