Currently, women manage only one percent of the U.S. asset management industry’s $71 trillion in assets, according to a 2017 study by Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School and Bella Research Group.
The University of Notre Dame in Indiana has partnered with the University of Pennsylvania and the educational nonprofit organization Girls Who Invest in a summer program designed to increase the number of women seeking careers in the asset management business.
Janet Cowell, CEO of Girls Who Invest, said that “women have often been steered away from careers in finance. And even if they go into finance, many times women are diverted into roles like human resources, marketing or other ancillary functions.”
The summer program began two years ago with 30 women at the University of Pennsylvania. This year, each university hosted a four-week summer workshop for 50 undergraduate women students who took classes and participated in projects relating to investment management. After completing coursework the women were assigned to internships with asset management firms for the remainder of the summer.
Mary Scott, associate director of the Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing, stated that “as we broaden awareness of how intellectually stimulating and rewarding these types of careers can be, our hope is that more females will be interested in pursuing this industry.”