But the inroads that women have made in money market funds show that there is a path to greater representation in the industry.
Morningstar Inc., the investment tracker, says only 8.69% of U.S. open-ended stock funds with named managers are run by women. The statistics in bonds are somewhat better: 9.37% of bond-fund managers are women. But that's still well below the percentage of women in the overall population.
The data aren't entirely bleak. If you define “fixed income” to include money market funds, the power of women portfolio managers increases vastly. Patricia Larkin, for example, runs more than $179 billion for Dreyfus. Federated Investors' Deborah Cunningham manages $260 billion in money market fund assets. And Charles Schwab's Linda Klingman handles about $619 billion in money funds.
In taxable money market funds, about 36% are run by women, according to data from Money Fund Intelligence. “Women have a long history in the money fund business and, anecdotally, it has always seemed one of the areas of the investment business that isn't dominated by men,” said Peter Crane, CEO of Crane Data, which publishes Money Fund Intelligence.
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