"Men probably look for more exciting and challenging jobs than the financial industry, where work requires more patience, detail, caution and rule compliance," says Voravan Tarapoom, president of the Association of Investment Management Companies, a mutual funds trade group, and also chairwoman of BBL Asset Management.
"Financial jobs require very detailed and cautious persons," she says. "This may fit the female character more."
Women account for 57 per cent of Thailand's finance and insurance workforce, according to government statistics. Yet the fact that two-thirds of senior management and executive roles are filled by men indicates Thai women still face challenges in achieving equality, says Joni Simpson, a specialist on gender, equality and non-discrimination at the International Labour Organisation in Bangkok.
"Accounting is a field that is accessible to women in Thailand, and therefore they have been able to advance in this sector and are highly visible across several levels of jobs," she says.
Yet across all industries, Thai women account for less than 10 per cent of executive and management roles on average, she says. More work needs to be done in all sectors including finance to encourage mentoring, access to childcare and eldercare, and chances for advancement, she said.
Still, Thailand's high proportion of women in senior financial roles happened without government legislation, said Bandid Nijathaworn, chief executive at the Thai Institute of Directors and a former deputy governor of the Bank of Thailand. Norway and Sweden, like other countries in Europe and elsewhere, have enacted laws requiring companies to have 30 per cent of their boards comprised of women.
The Thai central bank has had a female governor, from 2006 to 2010, and at least half of its managerial staff is female. At the Stock Exchange of Thailand, the president is female, as are almost 70 per cent of workers. Thailand has also had a female prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of the ruler deposed in a 2006 coup.
"Female executives must show much more superior or outstanding managerial skills and competency over male colleagues to receive promotions," said Kesara Manchusree, the president of the Stock Exchange of Thailand. "It's a very tough job to balance business and family roles."
Across the Asia-Pacific region, the proportion of women in senior business roles has climbed to 25 per cent this year from 23 per cent in early 2016, according to a global survey released this week by consultancy Grant Thornton. At the same time, the percentage of Asian companies with no female representation in senior management surged to 36 per cent from 25 per cent in the same period last year.
At Kasikornbank, Kattiya remembers a male-dominated organisation when she joined about three decades ago, after her father suggested banking as a career rather than her initial choice of advertising.
Kasikornbank had almost no female employees until around 1984, according to Chatchai Payuhanaveechai, who worked there for about three decades, including as a senior executive vice-president. He's now president of the state-owned Government Savings Bank.
"Even at my bank, when we open up new positions, about 80 per cent of applications have been from female candidates - this is the trend in Thai banking," he said. "I think the new male generation wants to be entrepreneurial. We're now in a reversal where we've been promoting the hiring of male employees."
Female employees in finance and insurance numbered 314,300 in the third quarter of 2016, according to the latest government data. For men, the number is 244,400.
Today at Kasikornbank, the 14,000 female employees outnumber men 2-to-1. The bank outperforms its peers: 2016 return on equity was 13 per cent compared with the 11 per cent average of Thai lenders, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
As its first female president, Kattiya is one of two women on the bank's 26-strong management team, according to the bank's website - and was an unusual presence at a large dinner with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos in January.
"I was the only woman," she said. "There must have been at least 30 people - business people from Russia, Japan and Thailand. So it's still a male-dominated world. Women are playing major roles in the business world, but there is still more to come."
- Bloomberg
