The Investment Management Industry Needs More Women — Here’s How to Make That Happen
Book review of “Undiversified: The Big Gender Short in Investment Management”
The key message of Modern Portfolio Theory, developed seven decades ago by Nobel laureate, Harry Markowitz, can be summarized succinctly: when it comes to your investments, it pays to be diversified. Yet when it comes to the investment management industry itself, according to a recent study, gender diversification is lacking: only 10 percent of portfolio managers are women, and investment management firms that are majority owned by women manage less than 1 percent of global investable assets. According to Ellen Carr and Katrina Dudley, this headline statistic was the genesis for their thoughtful and practical book, Undiversified: The Big Gender Short in Investment Management (Columbia Business School Publishing).
As a white male business school finance professor, you might think I’m the farthest thing from a role model for aspiring women in investment management, and you might wonder why I’m reviewing such a book — true enough. And yet I’m actually trying to be part of one of the…
