Wall Street is still very white, male at the top

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“We’re starting to see a critical mass coming through the pipeline,” Harvey said, referring to Wall Street in general. ”But it will take time for the pipeline to show impact at the managing director level.”

A 2005 diversity survey commissioned by the Securities Industry Association showed that women accounted for 44 percent of the industry’s work force, up from 37 percent in 2003. Women account for 46.4 percent of the total U.S. civilian work force, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

“The fact that the percentage of white men is decreasing and the representation of women of all races is increasing is an optimistic sign that the industry is moving toward parity with the general work force,” the SIA said.

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Still, Adam Klein, an attorney at Outten & Golden LLP in New York, said there are several reasons why minorities and women may not see investment banking as a good fit. For one, he said they may not get paid the same as their white male counterparts for doing the same job.

Klein’s firm represented former Morgan Stanley bond trader Allison Schieffelin in a sex discrimination lawsuit against the securities firm that resulted in a $54 million settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2004.

“These diversity efforts don’t say anything about compensation,” Klein said. “That’s the bottom line issue.”

Klein also said informal networking, such as playing golf and strip bar outings — also prevent equal treatment because minorities and women may feel uncomfortable in those settings.

“There’s no way to monitor these because they operate outside the formal constraints of a company’s diversity program,” he said.

Others cite a lack of flexibility.

“They don’t want fewer hours, but control over what they do,” Sharon Hadary, executive director of the Center for Women’s Business Research, said of women’s tendency to leave corporate careers for entrepreneurial ventures.

“The second reason is that they didn’t get an opportunity to influence the strategic direction of the organization, that no one listened to them,” Hadary said.

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