The following is a guest post from Annette Evans, VP of People and Culture, Global Processing Services
This month we at GPS are joining the #BreakTheBias campaign for International Women’s Day 2022 and adding our voice to encourage the fintech community to actively speak up about gender bias in the workplace and outside of it.
Assessing the current status of the fintech industry – given that progressive mind-sets and innovation are the lifeblood of our sector – you may assume fintechs would be pioneers of gender diversity.
Whilst progress is certainly being made, the reality is our sector still has a long way to go.
As the GPS-sponsored Diversity for Growth Report in partnership with Findexable uncovered recently, the representation of women in fintech is not as diverse as one might expect.
Two data points stood out to me in our survey. Firstly, there is a consensus that a lack of gender balance means men’s ideas dominate across every stage of the fintech value chain. Secondly, rapidly scaling companies are struggling to balance diversity commitments with the challenges of building teams in new regions at scale and speed.
On the positive side, fintech firms appear to unanimously agree that a commitment to being fully inclusive makes business sense. They understand that well-managed diverse groups outperform homogenous ones as diversity leads to a higher collective intelligence, better decision-making, and accelerated innovation.
Many also understand that it makes commercial sense as having more women in technical positions leads to more customers because it means creating products which are tailored with women in mind. Women understand how women think and what they need.
It seems strange, therefore, that there is still a gender diversity issue in fintech.
When I speak to leaders across our fast-growing global GPS ecosystem of fintechs, schemes, and banks, I nearly always hear the same thing. The bench of candidates being presented for senior or critical technical roles is rarely diverse, limiting hiring choices.
But recognizing this issue does not solve it. It simply pushes the challenge back to recruiters to try and resolve.
The challenge recruiters face is that the pool of fintech talent we are all recruiting from, whilst growing, is still small compared to other sectors.
We all continue to recruit from the same talent pool, which is problematic, not just from a gender diversity perspective but also for diversity as a whole in all its guises.
This is where I say we all need to apply the #BreakTheBias lens. For recruiters to be successful in providing a more diverse range of talent, leaders need to be more open-minded about where the talent may come from.
Change is happening, but real change takes time. Whilst diverse talent is entering the talent pool at the entry level, it will take time for them to gain their experience and work their way up to bring diversity to more senior levels.
In the immediate term, companies need to review their business culture and ask potentially tough questions around why so few women choose to work for their company. Do you create an environment where talent in all guises can shine? Or does it unconsciously favor those who already fit the mold? If someone thinks or acts differently, how are they treated? Businesses who fail to ask these questions risk losing out.
It is only by shining a mirror on ourselves that we can discover the knowledge we need to take action to try and address diversity challenges. We have to listen to be given the opportunity to change. Change can take a long time, but it will take even longer if it is delayed, ignored, or hidden.
As the organizers of this year’s International Women’s Day state, knowing that bias exists is not enough. Action is needed to level the playing field. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day.