What it is to be an early career woman – looking much younger than her age [next time to complain about that one] – trying to make her way in a male-dominated field!

My experience shows that gender inequality is real across the finance field. Needless to say who the system is disadvantaging. When I started in the industry, my first instincts were to arm myself with – not weapons – two key points driving my state of mind.

Confidence. It is not easy to build a loaded package of confidence for work, especially when you look like a 16-year-old girl, a woman of color, and a small-height-for-age. But I guess preparation is key to build strong confidence. Get prepared for every meeting, plan your next move and work ahead of time. With great preparation, speaking up in a meeting being the only female – it is common in the industry - would be a cup of tea.

Not viewing other women as competitors. It is easy to fall into this because there are so few of us, and we are all trying to get to the top. The automatic feeling when we meet a new female colleague would be that we are threatened. However, we have no choice but to go over that if we want to overcome the challenge. Let us try our best to support each other, build each other up, and empower one another.

One day, I came across an interesting article of Harvard Business Review. Let me quote: “it is time to stop telling women to work harder and to adapt – when it is the environment that has to change”. It made me realize that the root cause of gender equality issues is the system. We all should, as aware as we are – and by “we”, I am mentioning both men and women - give efforts to break this system. Leaders in finance may consider to first acknowledging that gender gap is real, document properly on the related causes, in order to take suitable actions.

By Era Andriambololona, Investment Analyst