00:00 The fund management industry has plenty of opportunities.
00:03 Despite that, women fund managers are drastically underrepresented.
00:07 The latest findings of Morningstar report shows that of the 473 fund managers, 42 are
00:12 women who are managing funds either as primary or secondary managers.
00:16 While there has been a steady increase in the number of fund managers as compared with
00:20 428 seen last year, the number of women fund managers has been static.
00:25 Given that there was no increase in the number of female fund managers since last year, the
00:29 representation marginally declined to 8.88% from 9.18%.
00:35 The total open and close-end assets managed or co-managed by female fund managers was
00:40 approximately Rs 6.66 lakh crore or 12.63% of the total mutual fund assets.
00:47 The assets managed by women saw a sharp uptick compared with last year when women managed
00:52 about Rs 4.44 lakh crore, a growth of 50%.
00:57 Women in finance are no longer an oddity, with some fund management companies even led
01:01 by women.
01:02 However, the percentage of women fund managers in the country still remain exciting.
01:06 We spoke to a few female fund managers at top AMCs with some of them having 25+ years
01:12 of experience in the field of finance and understand their growth and challenges.
01:16 When I started off, there were people who were joining and gradually getting into it.
01:22 Wherever they had family support, the number of girls who were coming were much lesser.
01:28 But today, it is almost every family, at least to start with, people target to get into career,
01:36 have that thought process.
01:37 The journey has been quite challenging as well as quite a learning perspective.
01:43 And I guess on the curve of learning, I'm still there and learning every day.
01:47 That's the best part of my field, I can say.
01:49 The problem of representation of females being less is not particular just to the finance
01:55 industry, it's overall because the overall pie itself, the labour force participation
02:01 if you look at females, it's been quite low in India.
02:04 I mean, it's even lower than what our neighbouring countries have.
02:08 So the problem is everywhere.
02:09 But as you mentioned, yes, in our field of finance, it has been even much more.
02:14 Maybe one reason would have been the lack of confidence.
02:18 The gender or pay scale has not been an issue anymore.
02:21 And opportunities have also been the same and equal for all in this highly competitive
02:26 industry.
02:27 So what could lead to more participation and representation of women in the fund management
02:31 industry?
02:32 Organisations start prioritising the fact, look at women diversity and not only for namesake,
02:39 but women diversity, gender diversity is a big, big fad today.
02:45 Better flexible hours of working, work from home if possible on few days, a hybrid model
02:52 and the proximity to the workplace.
02:54 These are some things which can reduce the burden on females and the participation rate
02:59 would increase.
03:01 [Music]
Comments