My experience as a woman in finance has been a relatively easy one. For today’s Business Quickie, I want to share my experience of being a woman in a male-dominated industry.
Hi, I’m Bette Hochberger, CPA, CGMA. And on today’s Business Quickie, I’m going to talk about my experience as a woman in finance. So I think maybe it’s a little unfair for me to have a perspective on this because I came from a different background that was also very male-dominated. If you watch one of my other videos, I talk about my educational background. I went to engineering school, and there are more men in engineering than women. That’s just kind of how it goes. I’ve always liked math. So that’s always pointed me in a direction that would be in a more male-dominated field.
I think I, though, have been fortunate that I’ve very rarely ever dealt with any real overt sexism in the financial world. Now, I don’t know what people say that I don’t hear. Maybe people talk about me behind my back. I don’t know. But I can think of one time that someone said something obnoxious, and it wasn’t even a sexist thing. It was just a macho thing because when you’re in more male-dominated industries, there tends to be a bit more macho behavior that goes on.
Other than that, I would say that it’s probably like any other job. There’s a lot of math. If you don’t like math, maybe you don’t go into the financial world. Don’t go into accounting or engineering. I don’t go into the sciences, but overall I’ve had a pretty great experience. I’ve always had very supportive bosses. Everything has been good. What’s funny, if I think about it, I think the worst bosses I had were other women, which is a little goofy.
But I think you have to realize that when you’re a woman in finance, you’re still a woman. So you can’t force yourself to act like a man. You have to be who you are, and the more authentic yourself you can be, the better off you are because authenticity gets you very, very far.
So I think many younger people contemplating going into that field, my field of accounting, a different financial field, engineering, science, math, any of those things, go for what your passion is. And don’t worry about what that career will look like so much, because if you like finance, you like math, you like science, go into one of those careers in those fields. The confidence that you have in being yourself and enjoying that kind of work will take you further than anything else. So I’ve had a pretty good run being a woman in accounting.
That’s it today for your Business Quickie, and we’ll see you next time.
