Women in Finance

­Here at Investing Ethically we’re really committed to being an inclusive workplace, meaning that all our team feel they belong.  As an example, each year since 2018 we’ve been a signatory to the Women in Finance Charter – promoting gender diversity and a more balanced and fair financial services industry.  Once again, in 2026, we’re pleased to continue to have 50% female Board directors.  In addition, two of our four financial planners are women as are, currently, more than half our employees.

There’s now strong evidence for correlation linking leadership diversity and business performance.  For example, McKinsey found that companies in the top quartile for management gender diversity are 39% more likely to have above-average profitability, compared to the ‘laggards’ in the fourth quartile.  This had increased from 25% in 2020.

To me, this is because these companies have leaders who better represent their staff, customers, and society at large – as well as having broader perspectives and ideas that help the company deal with today’s challenging world.  So valuing diversity is not only the right thing to do, there’s also a strong business case.

That said, women remain significantly under-represented in senior business leadership. The World Economic Forum continues to highlight the “drop to the top” phenomenon: while women make up almost half of the entry-level workforce, their representation falls sharply at each step up the corporate ladder, with women holding globally fewer than one in five Chief Executive roles. As of 2025, there were still only nine women leading FTSE 100 companies as Chief Executives.

In my own experience, at professional financial services events, I still find that only about 1-in-10 of particants are female.

The ethical funds we deal with, here at Investing Ethically, recognise the importance of these issues.  Board diversity is a key theme for ethical fund managers, a measure of good corporate governance.  How well companies manage diversity, more broadly, will influence fund managers’ investment decisions – and be an important topic for ongoing engagement.  Personally I find this re-assuring on lots of levels – as a financial adviser, an investor, a company director…oh, and yes, as a woman. 😊

If you’d like to learn more about diversity, your investments, and how our Chartered Financial Planners can help, then please get in touch.