Doing the Math on Women’s Empowerment

March 08, 2019

5 min read

Erin Bigley, CFA| Chief Responsibility Officer

Lei Qiu| Chief Investment Officer —Thematic Innovation Equities

No one organization is responsible for the advancement of women, and that means every organization is. Women’s empowerment starts with education. It continues with the ability to earn an equitable living, especially in fields where women are underrepresented, and crests with women playing leadership roles at work or owning their own businesses.

On International Women’s Day, we’re using the international language of numbers to highlight three very different organizations that are empowering women, as well as looking into empowerment in our own backyard. The three external organizations are exactly the kinds of entities that AB’s sustainable and impact investing strategies focus on, while our own example is an effort to hold ourselves accountable as we consider the way forward.

The Case for Women's Colleges: Mount Saint Mary's University in Los Angeles

Women are more likely to earn a graduate degree after attending a women’s college than a co-ed institution. They’re even more likely to pursue graduate studies if they attend Mount St. Mary’s University, the only women’s college in the western United States.

Source: Hardwick Day and AB

Women’s colleges are certainly effective at pushing women to achieve as much as they can, but it’s clear that women overall have made tremendous strides in higher education over the last five decades.

Database last accessed March 15, 2019
Source: National Center for Education Statistics

Women Taking the Lead at Work: The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce's (CIBC's) Women in Leadership Bonds

It’s no secret that women are underrepresented at the top of the corporate ladder, including on corporate boards and in executive positions.

Boardroom statistic as of 2016. Fortune 500 statistics accessed March 5, 2019.
Source: Deloitte and Catalyst

That’s why CIBC Women in Leadership bonds are so unique. These securities package together loans from companies that meet highly specific criteria for women in leadership. A company can make the cut in one of three ways:

Source: CIBC

Empowering Women Through Entrepreneurship: Etsy

Etsy is a company that walks the talk on serving women and hiring women, including in jobs where they are usually underrepresented.

As of 2017
Source: Etsy

Data shows that more businesses would be wise to follow suit, as women-owned businesses grow faster than businesses overall.

As of 2018
Source: American Express

Women in Underrepresented Fields: AB's Female Quants

Amy Yang’s job is to churn through mountains of data to show investment teams how portfolios look from 40,000 feet—their exposure to risk and other factors that may influence performance.

Yang is one of the youngest quantitative equities research analysts at AB and one of only a few women in her role. There are no reliable statistics about the number of female quantitative analysts in financial services, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it’s small. Though AB is firmly committed to gender diversity, with women comprising 42% of new hires in 2018, male quants outnumber their female counterparts here, too. (It should be noted, however, that AB is proactively trying to add more gender balance in this arena.)

The story of Yang’s career offers a possible route to recruiting more female quants.

Step 1: Encourage early and often

Women in the US earned roughly half of bachelor’s and advanced degrees in STEM fields in 2015, but they were severely underrepresented in math, computer science and “hard sciences” such as physics—just as they are in quantitative research.

Source: National Science Board

Yang’s experience suggests that the expectation of success can go a long way toward keeping women engaged in science and math. Yang struggled with math in elementary school, so her mother gave her additional practice problems at home. As she worked through them and gained confidence, she fell in love with the subject. When programming classes were giving her a headache as an engineering major at Columbia University, the challenge only made her more determined to succeed.

“I never gave myself the choice to give up,” she said.

Step 2: Urge women to advocate for themselves

Confidence was key to advancing at work, too. Yang seeks out people she admires at AB to discuss their careers, asks people with more experience for advice and help, and applied for her current role–an internal transfer–knowing she’d face a learning curve.

“Sometimes, as women, we want to feel that we’re ready before we apply for a job, while I think men are more willing to take the chance that they can learn what they need to know on the job,” Yang said.

Yang’s eagerness to learn from more experienced peers doesn’t mean she sells herself short, however. She knows she brings important skills to the table, including her ability to mine new data sources and create digestible narratives to explain those insights.

Step 3: Create a supportive culture

The open, team-oriented culture at AB is what allows Yang to feel comfortable asking more senior executives to coffee and sharing her findings in a room full of people with 20-plus years of experience.

“I never feel that people don’t want me to raise my hand in a meeting,” she said. “They make me feel really comfortable about the ideas I bring to the table, even if they’re not the best ideas they’ve ever heard.”

Yang loves her job and says she doesn’t think much about her gender while she does it. Still, she would like to see more female quants. Maybe she’s just the inspiration the next generation needs to make it happen.

The views expressed herein do not constitute research, investment advice or trade recommendations and do not necessarily represent the views of all AB portfolio-management teams.

About the Authors

Erin Bigley, CFA

Erin Bigley is a Senior Vice President, AB’s Chief Responsibility Officer, and a member of the firm’s Operating Committee and Women’s Leadership Council. In this role, she oversees AB’s responsible investing strategy, including integrating material environmental, social and governance considerations throughout the firm’s research, engagement and investment processes. Bigley joined the firm in 1997 and previously served as a portfolio manager and trader for the global and Canadian bond strategies. She spent two years based in London as the global head of Fixed Income Business Development for institutional clients. Bigley served as a fixed-income senior investment strategist for over a decade, and as head of the strategist team from 2018 to 2021. Prior to taking her current role, she served as head of Fixed Income Responsible Investing, overseeing the Fixed Income team’s responsible investing strategy. Bigley holds a BS in civil engineering from Villanova University and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. She is a CFA charterholder. Location: New York

Lei Qiu

Lei Qiu is the Chief Investment Officer for Thematic Innovation Equities and is responsible for the AB Global Disruptors and International Technology Portfolios. She has been a portfolio manager at AB since 2016 and was previously a senior research analyst, focusing on the technology, media and telecom sectors. Prior to joining the firm in 2012, Qiu was the founder and the managing partner for three years of Phidias Capital Management, a technology-focused asset-management company. From 2003 to 2009, she was a general partner and senior research analyst at Andor Capital Management, and from 2000 to 2002, she was a research analyst at Chilton Investment Company. From 1995 to 1997, Qiu worked as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs & Co. She holds a BA in economics (magna cum laude) from Smith College and an MA in business economics from Harvard University. Location: New York