"What's beneficial to me is that we think about issues differently and share perspectives to help each other," says one member of the group, Judy Redpath of VISTA Wealth Strategies in Reston, Va.
There's a need for mentoring. Some corporations offer formal mentoring programs. More typically, women mentor each other. But those seen as mentors are often the most successful in the industry and therefore extremely busy, so the mentoring commitment requires great personal sacrifice.
Advisor Deena Katz, a partner at Evensky & Katz in Coral Gables, Fla., believes wholeheartedly that women who can reach out to other women, should-by both recruiting them and mentoring them once they are in the industry.
Women need to take more risk. Being your own boss and setting up your own tent is a great way to level the playing field. And the independent channel is a great place to do this, where a woman can shape her own business environment-everything from what she pays herself to what people she associates with to what services she offers.
The problem is that women may be too risk-averse to choose this path (though that's a problem for men, too).
Training programs have become scarcer. The formal training programs offered by the wirehouses are less common than they used to be, though high-profile discrimination lawsuits and enhanced awareness have at least helped ensure that the selection process for admission to such programs is gender-neutral.
So what about university programs dedicated to financial planning? Despite the gender-neutral selection process, even here there is seemingly trouble. Deena Katz, an associate professor, reports that it's only occasionally females make up at least half of her entering classes at Texas Tech. Instead, the applicants and enrollees to the Texas Tech program usually sport the same 3-to-1 ratio of males to females that the financial advisory profession at large does.
There are more opportunities, however, for women across the industry to get together and network through events. One of these is the Barron's Winner's Circle Top Women Financial Advisors Summit, held annually for the nation's top 100 female advisors.
Carrie Coghill of D.B. Root & Company in Pittsburgh has been named to the top 100 list for six years, and she attends the conference every year to meet with participants willing to share valuable ideas and strategies. "Women have unique qualities when it comes to managing client relationships. Having a venue for top women advisors to learn from each other has personally enabled me to come away from the conferences with ideas I am comfortable implementing in my practice."
Some people believe that we'll need to recruit women simply for demographic reasons: After all, we have to prepare for a projected increase in the number of affluent widows as baby boomers age. The question is whether these widows will stick with their families' old advisors or seek someone new, perhaps a woman.