WACC: Where Are the Corporate Chicks? A study on female presence within corporate finance and banks' efforts to increase it.

Abstract: The financial industry, especially corporate finance, has historically been perceived as somewhat male-dominated. During recent years however, attention has been drawn to increased efforts to achieving gender equality among professionals within finance, followed by debates regarding the importance of it. This thesis aims to, with the help of qualitative and quantitative methods, analyse how Nordic banks work to attract more women to their corporate finance divisions, and why this has proven to be challenging. Furthermore, female students' perceptions of both the industry and banks' employer branding activities are evaluated through a survey. In more detail, the quantitative part of the study aims to help gain an understanding of why women tend to be underrepresented within corporate finance. The findings suggest that banks, more than ever before, try to be more conscious about emphasising gender diversity within their banks by organizing events for women only, as well as highlighting their female representatives. Moreover, banks have designed their recruitment advertisements to be more appealing to a broader group of applicants. Additionally, banks seem to be aware of the fact that the prevailing image of the industry is rather negative, which is also supported by the findings from the quantitative part of the study. The findings also imply that underrepresentation of women in corporate finance can be related to female students' lacking interest in the topics of finance and mathematics, the negative image of the industry, as well as perceptions of unequal opportunities within the industry.