BANGALORE: Mutual fund management space is a huge arena for job prospectus as there is always going to be the need to invest. The disheartening fact about this area of finance is that it is still a male dominated area with women having only a thirteen percent influence when it comes to managing funds. India’s first mutual fund was launched sixty years ago but the number of women working in this sector is very less. Here is the information as per the research conducted by Business Insider.

This problem of women being a minority at the extreme level is not just an issue her in India but something that is prevalent around the world. The U.S also has only about 10 percent of women managers in this area of fund management. It is to be noted that women there are fighting for a more flexible system to allow women to penetrate in this field.

In India the non-equity space has more women than in the equity area, which is to say that only about 1.9 percent of the sector’s total AUM (Assets Under Management) is under women. Furthermore out of this sixty percent is managed by two prominent ladies Swati Kulkarni, executive vice-president and fund manager at UTI Asset Management and Roshi Jain, vice-president and portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton India.

The only argument posed as to the scant number of women in this area by experts and critics is that this job is highly stressful and women have the responsibility of Family management. These two reasons are attacked by lady managers in this field. “It is a function of interest on the part of women and the choices they make. Fund management is a high-stress job, with high accountability, and such market-related stress is the same across equity and debt,” said Lakshmi Iyer, head of fixed income and products at Kotak mutual Funds, reports Business Insider.  

Experts have also pointed out that women are shy to enter a highly male dominated sector. But the truth is women are not giving up with this fight and are willing to do anything to get the gender discrimination or differentiation in this area equaled. Though the number of applicants in this area is still comparatively less, there are hopes that more will start venturing into this sector of managing funds.

Read Also: Banks Urge RBI To Amend Norms Against Defaulters

Govt Notifies Act To Empower Sebi With Extra Powers