5Q: Jennifer Reynolds - Why women don't run Bay Street

Jennifer Reynolds is a great conversationalist – lightning fast on her feet, and chalk full of statistics about the world of high finance and women’s professional place within it.

Just don’t ask how she manages to do all that she does and still be a good mom to her children.

“Quite frankly, that question really frustrates me because we never ask that of men,” she said in a recent interview with Yahoo Canada Finance.

“I think we just need to stop asking that question because every time we do we put this pressure on women to be perfect in both fields,” she said.

Reynolds is the president and CEO of Women in Capital Markets, a non-profit organization based in Toronto that aims to encourage young women into careers in the financial sector and acts as a voice of advocacy for those already in the industry who are struggling to move up into senior management positions.

Women may control the purse strings in the family home, but, in the corporate office, money management is still a man’s domain.

In the past three decades, women’s participation in the Canadian workforce has more than doubled, to approximately 47 per cent.

But recent studies by Catalyst Canada found women make up just 25 per cent of junior roles within the capital markets. The number drops to 17 per cent when looking at vice-president positions, and 10 per cent as managing directors.

Men hold 83 per cent per cent of profit and loss roles.

She is passionate on the topic of gender equality in the workforce. Before taking on her current role, Reynolds spent 15 years working in the capital markets industry, most recently at Stonecap Securities where she was managing director. She’s also held senior investment banking roles with BMO Capital Markets where she worked from 2000 to 2010, before joining the venture capital industry as a director with OMERS Ventures.

In her off time (if you want to call it that) she volunteers her time as board director of a Toronto-based theatre company and, yes, runs marathons, too.

Oh, and since the question is already out there, she has six children, all of whom are doing just fine, thank you very much.

“I think it is perfectly realistic to have successful careers and healthy and happy families,” she said.

Now that that’s cleared up, it’s time to get to back work on the tackling the real problems holding women back.

There are more young women going into finance and accounting at university than ever. How is all that education not translating into more women working in the financial field?

You know there is a structural issue here because we are not graduating ourselves out of this problem. You are correct in that women now earn over half of all Canadian university degrees, and 34.5 per cent of MBAs granted in 2011 were to women. In addition, women represented 47 per cent of students in business and management programs at the master’s level in 2010. Those programs could be in a variety of areas, finance, accounting, or other industry specific management programs. So clearly we have a lot of woman going into the industry, but it hasn’t translated into more women getting into senior roles.

If education isn’t the issue, what is?

In many cases, young women just don’t know about the jobs. They are young and haven’t had exposure in their network to people who are in wealth management or risk management and all these different parts of the financial market and all the different parts that make it work. For some reason men seem to have more knowledge of the capital markets and the types of career opportunities there are.

What’s the second part of the equation?

Those who know about the jobs often have a negative perception of them – that they are male-dominated, a sort of boorish, locker-room kind of atmosphere. But Canada’s large financial institutions, they just can’t operate that way. So I think a lot of those perceptions just aren’t accurate anymore. Is it still male dominated? Absolutely, I am not going to try to say otherwise, but there are all kinds of jobs out there that I think women really need clarification around. ‘Is the atmosphere really what I think it is?’ I think they will find that it isn’t.

So you are saying the depiction we saw of the life of a trader in the movie Wolf of Wall Street isn`t very realistic?

Things like Wolf of Wall Street are just off the charts ridiculous. Certainly it is a competitive industry and there are more men than women, like I said, but the types of antics are not going on anymore. If you work in a financial institution in Canada the reality of your environment isn’t dramatically different than it would be if you were at a large telecommunications company or a large insurance company.

What traits do you need to survive in the industry, if it`s not about being competitive and brash?

The specific skills of a good trader would be very different from someone in risk management but, fundamentally, in finance it`s those technical skills in the beginning that are the ones that you are going to get hired on: Your eye for detail; your ability to research and understand complex information; and an ability to deal with financial analysis. But I would say that the kinds of people who end up sticking around in this industry are very good at a bunch of other things, too. The people who are only good at the technical things aren’t the ones who become the most successful. The most successful ones have great client skills, manage people well and are people who can work in large, complex environments and, quite frankly, have a lot of common sense and pragmatism.

It`s not just a recruitment issue, though. There is a huge retention problem in that women seem to drop out of this industry. Why do so many women leave?

There is this false perception that women leave the workforce for work-life balance reasons. Often they don’t want to get into the real reasons because they are pretty complicated. There was a study done on senior women leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies, and the most important reason women leave revolves around not feeling valued, not feeling part of the team decision making and not feeling like they had good opportunities for advancement. I know from experience, when you are working as hard as you do that if you feel you are not as valued as the guy sitting next to you, you pretty quickly make some decisions. That's what's driving women to leave. So then you need to ask why do women feel that way? There is something in the environment that is going on and I think it is as simple as the environment really was build for men and by men.

Can you elaborate?

Things like when different teams are being chosen, quite often women don’t get on the teams of the high-profile people, or the high-profile project. The way those teams are chosen is often very informal. You choose someone you like or someone you may have worked with. It tends to be same-like-same. So, then, there are two problems: Women don’t get the experience they need and then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You are then not getting the technical or professional skills you need to advance. The other part is that you are not developing the network and the sponsorship that tends to come out of having those close relationships and working on these projects. If someone has seen you prove yourself on a deal over and over and over, they are going to want to sponsor you. They are going to want to help you get promoting and see you be successful in your career.

What was your experience in the industry? Did you feel that exclusion compared to your male peers?

I have certainly felt this in my career sometimes. You do feel that people make a lot of assumptions particularly around when you are having children, and what you may be interested in or what you may be up for when you come back to work. I think that when you go on mat leave you are concerned when you get back are your clients going to be there? Are you missing out on opportunities? Then often when you do get back you have people say, `Oh, she is obviously very busy (at home) so she might not want to travel or be out in the field.` All those types of assumptions happen too often and leave women feeling excluded. It is a two-way street here, too. It is incumbent upon women to try and speak up and not just walk out the door.

You don`t like the motherhood question, but can we really be expected to adapt enough of a social shift to allow women to choose to stay at home or go into the workforce and never have that be part of the conversation?

I think that is where we have to get to. We all have decisions to make as parents around managing those responsibilities and how we are going to manage our professional responsibilities. I think men have to the same decisions. And I think there are realities associated with having a family that you need to commit to, but why is there this perception that if you have family duties that you can’t do your job? That is what has to go away.

Are there any easy answers?

We need to make all the informal ways that careers progress -- the mentorship and sponsorship -- more structured. Talent management has to become much more structured, much more transparent at all these companies. When you are hiring two MBAs out of school, there should be a process involved where management is evaluating what types of fields and projects and exposure to senior executives each of those people are getting. And they are going to have to make sure that, in the case of women, they are getting those same opportunities and same exposure as the men. Maybe the way deals are allocated becomes a little more formal to make sure they are getting that experience. Those are the kinds of things that need to be done to make sure women do have the same opportunities as men.

I am reminded of the comment (Toronto Mayoral candidate) John Tory made suggesting that women need to play golf in order to get ahead in business. Is it true?

He was talking about networking and getting to know people and golf certainly does help you get to know people. I am a golfer, full disclosure, and I enjoy it. I don’t do it for business. I do think that any way you are creating opportunities to get to know your clients and your colleagues is positive. Golf happens to be one where it is easy. Does it have to take place on the golf course? No. If you happen to like golf, fantastic, I encourage you to take it up and try and incorporate it into your networking for business. If you don’t golf, you need to find other ways to develop networks.

What if nothing ever changes and the number of women in capital markets or finance never shifts? What are we missing out on?

That is just a huge loss. Warren Buffett said it really well when he said, and I am paraphrasing, that America has done really well, but it has been at the expense of women. What could we do as a society if we employed a 100 per cent of our talent? In North America alone, increasing the proportion of women in the workforce adds to the GDP an estimated nine to 10 per cent. In other parts of the world where women are much less active in the workforce, the Middle East for instance, it is as high as 30 per cent. So from an economic perspective, it is huge the value that we are missing.

I also think we are missing a better place. I think we are missing different perspectives and I certainly don’t think that is where we are going to end up. I expect that my daughters will be equally as likely to move into senior leadership roles as their brothers by the time they are graduating from university.