really</i> been broken?">Has the glass ceiling in financial services <i>really</i> been broken?

Talking about males and females in any situation is always loaded with concern, so I would like to start this piece by saying that none of the following is intended as a statement about any specific gender. I am talking in generalities to get some very important points across.

We work in a male-dominated industry, driven by facts and numbers and quantitative analysis. Our industry is one that has been guided by calculable and analytical thinking and driven by results — this has led to a bias to a certain kind of employee. Not only was the business formed predominantly by men, but historically three things have driven the old way of thinking:

1. Men were the only part of the workforce when this industry was being created.

2. The thought was that men spent more time in college and on education, giving us the feeling they were the only ones who could be in this industry.

3. The cultural mindset was that only men could be trusted with financial decisions.

Check out a video with Joe Duran in which he explains why financial plans are obsolete the moment they're drawn up

Clearly those three tenets have been broken and are completely invalid. Women are a part of the workforce and are just as capable in academics and with quantitative skills. The thought that women cannot be trusted with money is also broken down.

As these things change, our view about how we work and how we hire in our industry must also change. There is no question that the old way of managing money has not allowed people to actually feel good about money and the decisions they make. The issue is that in our history, with a male-dominated quantitatively-driven mindset, we have spoken only to the intellectual part of money and not the emotional part of money. It would be hugely sexist to think that only men can talk to one side and women to the other. But what is true, in general, is that women are more comfortable understanding that there are two elements to understanding every financial decisio