Look past the pinstripes to the info

A suit and tie often help dress up a B-grade message - but they shouldn't. Photo / Getty Images

When someone dared me this week to write a sassy novella called Sharebrokers in the style of Jilly Cooper, I accepted with a large grin and got cracking. The protagonist wasn't exactly hard to find.

I'll make it a searing romp of triumph over adversity, I thought, where the main character starts as the paper-shuffler, then successfully battles all the industry pitfalls of sexism and bigotry and stress to become top dog.

She'll emerge as the best little broker in the world and all the boys will applaud when she collects her Services to Shares knighthood.

Or I'll have to write about the truth. I left mainstream finance, twice, parting from good jobs, a sparkly little career. Chauvinism was one reason. Strange workings of upper management was another and the global financial crisis did not exactly quell my disillusionment.

The main thing, though, that made me cry every day on the way home in the car was that clients were overwhelmingly inclined to believe opinion over evidence, based on personal judgments.

Time after time, a bloke in a suit could deliver the same material as I did, an identikit presso, and the client would nearly always chose his offer. I know they were identical because I wrote the presentations.

Or if I took a guy in pinstripes to my pitches, even if he sat in the corner and just nodded once or twice, the deal would get done in a flash. It was all good in the hood as long as I had a man on my metaphorical business arm.

Now, I took the Albert Einstein approach here "I do not mind that you are a girl, as long as you yourself do not mind." It was my mantra - I DO NOT MIND! Perhaps, if I give off my do-not-mind aura of energy to the universe, I mused, it might not mind either.

It is a brave thought, like jumping a horse over a blind hedge and praying mid-flight for a safe landing. And I stuck to it for a long time. I also did other things. I upped my game. I researched fanatically, like a beast.

In some cases I had lots of superior research. But opinions (personal judgments), it seems, die hard, or not at all.

The crux is this: what a large percentage of the investing community still believes is that a B-grade message from a male in Armani is better than an A-plus piece from a female, no matter how many Adrienne Winkelmann suits she turns up in.