Financial advisor: a job for men?

When you look at the entry-level echelon, women occupy roughly half of the positions of financial advisors. Interestingly enough this statement is true in most countries regardless of the wealth of the country. However, when you start to look at higher echelon, and more precisely in the executive positions, you find out that women occupy only 20% of the jobs. As McKinsey's stated recently in a very interesting study: "the more women progress in their careers, the more women lose ground to men: they are 24% less likely than men to be promoted in their firm. And this, even if they are as numerous as men to have ambition." Does this all mean that financial advisor is a job for men? Obviously not. It rather means that there is still a long way to go before equality can be reached between the two genders in this industry. We have had experiences with many financial advisors in order to compile our rankings tables and identify the best independent financial advisors in different countries, and it's true that overall we have been much more in touch with men than with women. Nonetheless, our experience and the clients' reviews that we could obtain show that clients do not rate their financial advisors differently depending on his/her gender. In other words, gender does not make a difference in being a good or poor financial advisor.