Research carried out by Sheri Berenbaum, a psychology professor, and her team at Penn State, looked at people's interest in occupations that  reveal sex differences and found them relevant to science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers. They studied teenagers with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (a genetic condition) and their siblings, who did not have CAH.

They found that people with CAH are more exposed to androgen – a type of male sex hormone- than is normal, while in the uterus. Females with CAH are genetically female and are treated as females, but their interests tend to be more similar to stereotypically male ones.

It would appear that sex hormones not only strongly influence our career choices but are also being held responsible for the current global financial crisis. According to Conservative MPs Mathew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi, close allies of George Osborne, in their new book “Masters of Nothing: How the Crash Will Happen Again Unless We Understand Human Nature” the global financial crisis would not have occurred if more women had held senior posts. They present scientific research showing that the male-dominated world of finance is prone to riskier, irrational behaviour that causes "market manias" and, ultimately, major crashes. They go on to say "The current gender imbalance seems to be contributing to the kind of market manias which cause financial crises……The dominance by men does not exist because of the inherently masculine nature of finance. Rather, the masculine nature of finance exists because of its dominance by men."

Harriet Harman would agree with this. In referring to the banking crunch triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, she remarked that if it had been ‘Lehman Sisters’, the problem might have been avoided. She went on to say "Women make up half the workforce of insurance companies and banks. Why shouldn't they have a say on boards as well?

Harriet Harman had a point, out of 1,000 public companies in the USA, with at least $1 billion in annual revenue, there are only 30 female CEOs. In the UK's FTSE 100 list, there are just three. Perhaps we should be looking to India for a better role model. Eleven per cent of 240 large companies in India, Indian-owned as well as multinational, have women CEOs, according to a study carried out by executive search firm EMA Partners. But more specifically, women comprise over half (54 percent) of the CEOs of organisations in the banking and financial services sector such as UBS, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, ICICI, Axis Bank and Bank of America Corp.

City Marketor