If there’s one thing you’d think Wall Street would have learned following the global financial crises, it’s that more of the same won’t make the future look brighter.  It’s been generally acknowledged that there’s been too much testosterone on Wall Street for a long time now.  So why is it that – even though women hold a minority of financial sector jobs – five times
as many women as men were laid off on Wall Street after the start of the recession,
according to Bloomberg News.

Meanwhile, the pay gap between men and
women in the industry, Bloomberg adds, actually widened between 2000 and
2007. The result is that while women in the broader work force have
made significant progress toward pay and opportunity parity, they have
actually lost ground on Wall Street.According to The Wall Street Journal,
9.6% more men are working in finance now than 10 years ago, but 2.6%
fewer women. Among young workers, the numbers are even starker: 16.5%
fewer women aged 20 to 35 and 21.8% fewer women aged 20 to 24.

Read more from Knowledge at Wharton about why the number of women even choosing to work on Wall Street has dropped,
and many of those who do start out there are deciding to leave or are
being pushed out.