Why have UK female fund manager numbers shown no growth for a decade?

Picking apart the stagnating numbers

Despite a plethora of diversity initiatives across the fund management industry, including the Closing the Gap report from the Investment Association, City Hive championing a more balanced workforce and Investment Week's Women in Investment Awards, female portfolio manager numbers are still woefully behind those of men.

Women comprise just 14% of fund managers at UK firms with assets under management (AUM) of between £30bn and £700bn, according to Morningstar data. The figures, which excludes funds of funds, provide an interesting, but disheartening, snapshot of the industry, covering 378 portfolios at Baillie Gifford, BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco, M&G, Royal London and Schroders, among others.  Of these firms, Baillie Gifford scored best with 14 of 53 fund managers being women, which amounts to 35%, and Invesco scored lowest with just three of the 44 fund managers, or 6.8%, within the dataset being ...