Merryn Somerset-Webb

The price of sex in the City

Morgan Stanley has just hosted its first ‘early access’ event for young women: 75 girls from 15 top schools were taken on a tour of the trading floor (I bet there weren’t many traders off sick that day)

issue 21 July 2007

Morgan Stanley has just hosted its first ‘early access’ event for young women: 75 girls from 15 top schools were taken on a tour of the trading floor (I bet there weren’t many traders off sick that day)

Morgan Stanley has just hosted its first ‘early access’ event for young women: 75 girls from 15 top schools were taken on a tour of the trading floor (I bet there weren’t many traders off sick that day) and given ‘networking’ sessions in which they could talk to female staffers. Morgan Stanley says the event was part of its strategy to ‘bring women in’, and it is not alone in this worthy-sounding aim: most big banks now make similar noises.

This seems odd. Given how beastly the City tends to be to women, I can’t quite see the point of putting so much effort into hiring them. Old-fashioned sexism has mostly gone from the trading floor: no one complains when you wear trousers or crawls under your desk to

see what kind of knickers you’re wearing.

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