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[pullquote]a good way to recruit more female advisors might be to put more hair dryers in the firm’s bathrooms[/pullquote]The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards’ conference was held in New York on April 22, where the latest research about the gender gap in financial services was released.

“The number of women CFPs has stalled at 23 percent in the past decade,” said Nancy Kistner, chair of the Women’s Initiative Advisory Panel. “Women are still challenged. Our workplace environments are not flexible enough and the financial planning industry is not immune to these challenges.”

The Making More Room for Women in the Financial Planning Profession study found reasons women are underrepresented in the industry include:

  • firms are not committed to women at the highest levels
  • there aren’t enough women role models
  • women don’t advocate for themselves enough

Read FA-mag.com‘s full report.

Even more intriguing and revealing (or shocking?) is OnWallStreet.com’s coverage of the study which included the following:

“The new report identifies several challenges, which largely fall into two areas: bias, both perceived and actual, and awareness of the profession. The perception of bias is strong, noted Peter Fondulas, whose research firm conducted focus groups and surveys that tapped roughly 1,800 advisors, students, non-CFP financial professionals and financial services executives. When asked about the way the financial services industry treats male and female advisors, respondents said firms are more worried that women will leave to start a family than men will, he said they were also far less likely to find that office culture makes women feel welcome or respected, or that women get strong support from colleagues.”

Women Financial Advisors: Double Standard

“Meanwhile, the vast majority of financial services executives — the people in charge of hiring advisors — believed either that there was no difference between the genders or that men were better suited, Fondulas said. Yet these same executives showed a “double standard,” Fondulas noted: When asked about gender differences in traits associated with the planning profession, these same executives were actually more likely to say that women have the characteristics — training, ethics, skills and so on — associated with the profession.

And one male financial services executive told researchers — apparently in jest — that a good way to recruit more female advisors might be to put more hair dryers in the firm’s bathrooms.” REALLY??

There’s more to it here: https://bit.ly/1f7fAVq.