'Equality in mortgages is getting better… but there's a long way to go'
The managing director of property finance at specialist lender StreamBank, has acknowledged that while progress has been made in achieving equality between men and women in financial services, there’s still a lot more to do.
Roz Cawood (pictured), who this year marks her 40th year in the business, noted that there isn’t an equal male-female split in the sector, and more men are in higher positions than women in big companies. She observed too the sexism that she encountered in the early part of her career. Diversity is a good thing for the industry, she urged.
“It's getting better, but I think there’s still got a long way to go,” Cawood told Mortgage Introducer. “It doesn't feel like 50/50 - certainly in finance and specialist lending, most of the brokers are male, most of the sales people are male. It still feels like that traditional… the further to the top you go, it's more male and then the lower level, like maybe admin, is more female. It takes time for the top table to change, doesn't it? There are women breaking glass ceilings in terms of being part of boards and running companies, but I think, certainly in finance, we see a lot of women at that level who perhaps have their own businesses, rather than being at the big corporates.”
Cawood maintained that a diverse workforce is a positive in business. “I think we all know that diversity improves profits, doesn't it?” she said, “and companies work better when there is more diversity. I don't really see myself as a role model, but I suppose I am in some ways, and if I can be a role model to other people to show that anything's possible, that you can achieve things, that's got to be a good thing.”
She noted that some detractors of women's recognition awards, argue that there aren’t equivalent male accolades, but she reasoned: “Until we get to that point of equity where everything's a level playing field, then it's important to highlight and provide role models for other people, whether that's women or people of colour or all different backgrounds. It's good to showcase that there is diversity.”
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Turned down as a management trainee because she might get married…
Reflecting on her own career, Cawood explained how she first took a job with one of the main banks after leaving school, and during her time there applied to go on its management scheme. “They turned me down for really bad reasons like ‘oh, you know, you'll be married in a few years and having kids’, which in the 80s was how it was, but it was a bit of a shock to me,” she said. “It was almost like saying, ‘well, that will be a waste’, and just that assumption that that's the path you would go down. I'd never really been brought up with ‘girls can do this, boys can do that’ – it was just that you could do what you wanted to do. When I joined the bank, I started to realise there was better career advancement and opportunities for men. You have to remember, back in the day, they would give a staff mortgage to men at 21, but women had to be married and 25, and so that was a bit crazy, but that's the way they viewed things.”
Cawood secured a management trainee role with a rival lender, and her career progressed, yet she encountered further sexism at her workplace. “When I was 25, I was head of operations,” she said. “So, I had about 36 staff and we had an audit and it came out in the audit that the team was run by ‘a young girl’. You soon realise that there is a difference and that finance is quite a male-dominated industry. Certainly when I was doing a lot of sales and going out and seeing brokers and to various meetings then, I was quite often the single female in the room.”
Cawood told how at her first job in the City, in the early 90s, women didn’t wear trousers because ‘it wasn’t the done thing’. She even adapted her TV viewing choices to integrate better with her male colleagues. “At the time, I thought that I had to fit in with what they expected,” she said. “So, for example, I'd watch football or I'd watch Top Gear so that I could join in some of the conversations. None of that really matters. It's just all about being authentic and being yourself and that you shouldn't really try to think that you have to fit in with other people.” Cawood concluded: “At the end of the day, it's all about your knowledge, your experience and what you can bring to the table - that's definitely something that I've learned throughout my career, just be yourself.”
