IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ausman/v40y2015i3p488-510.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Disappearing women: Why do women leave senior roles in finance?

Author

Listed:
  • Carolyn Neck

Abstract

If Finance companies are keen to increase the number of senior women, understanding why they leave is important. Interviews with 27 women provided deeper understanding of the organisational culture facing women working at senior levels in Finance, as well as insights into the decision to leave. Various cultural aspects can cause frustration – some relate to working in Finance in general, while some relate to issues impacting women. The decision to leave appears to be a combination of frustration, change and choice . Nearly every woman had frustration with her job, but this alone was rarely enough to trigger a decision to leave. This tended to be at a time when the woman was undergoing some form of change (in personal circumstances or seeking change in her life) at which time she considered her options. Choice was also important. It seems women have choice to leave a senior role and take a lower paying one, or one with more flexibility – or even not to work at all.

Suggested Citation

  • Carolyn Neck, 2015. "Disappearing women: Why do women leave senior roles in finance?," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 40(3), pages 488-510, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:40:y:2015:i:3:p:488-510
    DOI: 10.1177/0312896215578014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0312896215578014
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0312896215578014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:ilo:ilowps:344117 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Dwyer, Sean & Richard, Orlando C. & Chadwick, Ken, 2003. "Gender diversity in management and firm performance: the influence of growth orientation and organizational culture," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 56(12), pages 1009-1019, December.
    3. Cristian L. Dezsö & David Gaddis Ross, 2012. "Does female representation in top management improve firm performance? A panel data investigation," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(9), pages 1072-1089, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Linnenluecke, Martina K. & Chen, Xiaoyan & Ling, Xin & Smith, Tom & Zhu, Yushu, 2017. "Research in finance: A review of influential publications and a research agenda," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 188-199.
    2. Linnenluecke, Martina K. & Chen, Xiaoyan & Ling, Xin & Smith, Tom & Zhu, Yushu, 2016. "Emerging trends in Asia-Pacific finance research: A review of recent influential publications and a research agenda," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 66-76.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liu, Yonghong & Lei, Lijun & Buttner, E. Holly, 2020. "Establishing the boundary conditions for female board directors’ influence on firm performance through CSR," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 112-120.
    2. Elisa Ughetto & Mariacristina Rossi & David Audretsch & Erik E. Lehmann, 2020. "Female entrepreneurship in the digital era," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 305-312, August.
    3. Hoang, Tuyen Thanh & Nguyen, Cuong Viet & Phung, Tung Duc, 2019. "Do Male CEOs Really Run Firms Better than Female Counterparts? New Evidence from Vietnam," Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 60(2), pages 121-140, December.
    4. Angels Niñerola & Ana-Beatriz Hernández-Lara & María-Victoria Sánchez-Rebull, 2022. "Top Management Team Diversity and International Expansion: Spanish Companies in China," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440211, January.
    5. Letian Zhang, 2020. "An Institutional Approach to Gender Diversity and Firm Performance," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 439-457, March.
    6. Luiz Eduardo Gaio & Angela Christina Lucas & Johan Hendrik Poker Junior & Marcio Marcelo Belli, 2024. "Gender diversity in management and corporate financial performance: A systematic literature review," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(5), pages 4047-4067, September.
    7. Dah, Mustafa A. & Jizi, Mohammad I. & Kebbe, Reem, 2020. "CEO gender and managerial entrenchment," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    8. Soonchul Hyun & Jong Min Kim & Jeongsoo Han & Mark Anderson, 2022. "Female executive leadership and corporate social responsibility," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(3), pages 3475-3511, September.
    9. Rovelli, Paola, 2020. ""I am stuck in meetings": Understanding the relation of CEO time management with TMT size and gender diversity," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 777-790.
    10. Kristina Reineke & Holger Steinmetz & Rodrigo Isidor & Rüdiger Kabst, 2020. "Women on Top Management Teams and Firm Performance in German Medium-Sized Enterprises: The Moderating Role of Recruiting Source," Working Papers Dissertations 60, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    11. Pavana Jyothi & Jayasree Mangalagiri, 2019. "Would Firm Performance be Better with Women Directors? Evidence from India," Vision, , vol. 23(2), pages 180-188, June.
    12. Triana, María del Carmen & Richard, Orlando C. & Su, Weichieh, 2019. "Gender diversity in senior management, strategic change, and firm performance: Examining the mediating nature of strategic change in high tech firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(7), pages 1681-1693.
    13. Lucas, Ryley & Gunasekarage, Abeyratna & Shams, Syed & Edirisuriya, Piyadasa, 2021. "Female directors and acquisitions: Australian evidence," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    14. Michael Olbrich & Anna E. Nikolis & David J. Rapp & Katrin V. Weber, 2016. "Do Political Parties Play Dirty in the Discussion on Gender Balanced Boards? Evidence from Germany," Schmalenbach Business Review, Springer;Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft, vol. 17(3), pages 361-399, December.
    15. Ali, Muhammad & Konrad, Alison M., 2017. "Antecedents and consequences of diversity and equality management systems: The importance of gender diversity in the TMT and lower to middle management," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 440-453.
    16. Simona Galletta & Sebastiano Mazzù & Valeria Naciti & Carlo Vermiglio, 2022. "Gender diversity and sustainability performance in the banking industry," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(1), pages 161-174, January.
    17. Fabio De Matteis & Alessandra Tafuro & Fabrizio Striani & Daniela Preite, 2023. "Totally Publicly-Owned (TPO) Utilities and Financial Performance: What is the role of some aspects of governance?," MANAGEMENT CONTROL, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2023(3), pages 89-111.
    18. Vuong, Quan-Hoang & Huyen, Nguyen Thanh Thanh & Pham, Thanh-Hang & Phuong, Luong Anh & Nguyen, Minh-Hoang, 2020. "Mapping the intellectual and conceptual structure of research on gender issues in the family business: A bibliometric review," OSF Preprints jgnrw, Center for Open Science.
    19. Tleubayev, Alisher & Bobojonov, Ihtiyor & Gagalyuk, Taras & Glauben, Thomas, 2020. "Board gender diversity and firm performance: Evidence from the Russian agri-food industry," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 23(1), pages 35-53.
    20. Mario Daniele Amore & Orsola Garofalo & Alessandro Minichilli, 2014. "Gender Interactions Within the Family Firm," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(5), pages 1083-1097, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Banking; choice; interviews; investment banking; organisational culture of finance organisations; senior women; women leaving senior roles in Finance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M1 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration
    • M10 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - General
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:40:y:2015:i:3:p:488-510. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.agsm.edu.au .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.