A Diversity Award for the Private Equity Industry?

There are a lot of them. Histo­ri­cally, certainly, the tradi­tio­nal role model that at the very begin­ning kept women from any career. Even when there were initial impro­ve­ments in gene­ral, the male-domi­na­ted finan­cial indus­try contin­ued to lag behind. “Finance is not for women — focus on HR posi­ti­ons.” Brave women have igno­red this nonsense and fought their way through it. But the mathe­ma­ti­cal problem conti­nues: the top women in finance, and espe­ci­ally private equity – still too few in numbers – do not want to make the same mistake and promote exclu­si­vely female mentées.

So ever­y­thing is procee­ding very slowly. And i think there is also – and I can only conti­nue to report this as a man – that women expect reco­gni­tion for their achie­ve­ments, without constantly wanting to draw atten­tion to it with great cries of war. But if “Associate‑M(professional)” pursues sustainable self-promo­tion and “Associate‑W(eiblich)” simply does her job perfectly, in the end too often “Associate‑M” is remem­be­red and set.

I have to be careful with the answer so as not to give any indi­ca­ti­ons of possi­ble prize­win­ners. Perhaps, regard­less of GP or LP, there is a more advan­ced orga­ni­sa­tio­nal ancho­ring of measu­res in public insti­tu­ti­ons that, for exam­ple, allow women in the child phases not only to conti­nue working, but also to move forward. With GPs or LPs per se, we have not actually been able to disco­ver any rele­vant diffe­ren­ces in the “Diver­sity Fitness”.

At this point, a refe­rence to the first round of the awards is also expli­citly a refe­rence: “Diver­sity” for us means only that there is a more balan­ced distri­bu­tion between male and female employees. “Diver­sity” in a broa­der sense, we have yet to work out metho­di­cally by next year. But some­where you start where the dispro­por­tion is greatest.

By the way, I only have to look into my own asso­cia­tion – but by 2021 the bii will also have done his “big homework”.

In one of the first confe­rence calls, a lady from the jury so aptly stated that we have to work hard to get rid of the Diver­sity Awards soon, because then no one under­stands why self-evident things should be awarded. But we are not close to that yet. The figu­res mentio­ned in the intro­duc­tion are incre­di­ble and defi­ni­tely the reason for me to have laun­ched the Diver­sity Awards. Level 20, with which we have, of course, exch­an­ged views, require 20 percent of female leader­ship posi­ti­ons. And this mini­mum requi­re­ment is still a long way from realisation.

In the end, we want to moti­vate by exam­ple. Because one thing is certain: “Diver­sity drives perfor­mance.” The self-prosthe­sti­cal PE indus­try in parti­cu­lar should follow its animal spirits and ther­e­fore promote more women to manage­ment posi­ti­ons. Mixed teams are more crea­tive, only they have the 360-degree view.

Dr. Thomas A. Jesch, LL.M. Taxa­tion (George­town)
Geschäfts­füh­ren­der Vorstand / Mana­ging Board Member
bii Fede­ra­tion of Insti­tu­tio­nal Inves­tors, Frank­furt a. Main