Financial Crisis Starts to Cripple Gender Diversity Efforts - Building Gender Balanced Business

• 3 in 4 finance professionals see the financial crisis as giving women a chance to exit their corporations and start anew.

• That may sound good, but 6 in 10 of the respondents also saw the crisis as reducing women’s opportunities to rise in corporations, as more of the most promising candidates exit crippled companies.

• That could set back gender diversity programs significantly, regardless of efforts by the companies. (Never mind how another study found increased worries that the crisis will bring back the old boys’ ways.)

• But companies may make it worse, as 50% of respondents said reductions in training and development expenditures during the crisis were going to make it harder for women to advance in the long term.

• Nearly half of the respondents expect more women exiting finance to enter the entrepreneurial or nonprofit sector.

• One reason may be that respondents’ top prediction for crisis-caused change in the finance industry is a return to long work hours and enforced on-site “face time”. 1 in 10 respondents said industry changes would lead to more people delaying starting families.

• The PricewaterhouseCoopers survey included more than 1000 respondents from Europe, Americas and Australasia but mainly from London’s City financial district. 91% of respondents were women.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers summary of the survey