International Women’s Day 2025 Q&A

This year’s theme is ‘Accelerate Action,’ encouraging the need for increased momentum when addressing the systemic barriers women face in both professional and personal spheres. 

While progress is being made, fintech remains an incredibly male-dominated sector, with women accounting for just 4% of CEOs. Our co-founder, Liz Fleming discusses the steps we can take to improve female representation in fintech and her advice for women looking to start their own businesses. 

Fintech and financial services continue to be male-dominated spheres. How can firms in these sectors champion gender equality?

I strongly believe equality starts in the classroom, where more needs to be done to raise awareness about the sector. There is clearly no lack of talent, with girls having the technical and analytical skills these sectors need. What is lacking is pathways into these jobs. 

Just this week, I was speaking to a Head of Careers at a secondary school who explained that the girls she teaches are just not hearing enough about the opportunities available in fintech and financial services. To correct this, firms must get involved in opening opportunities to young women, supporting in-school projects and ensuring that work experience and internship opportunities are made available.  

Additionally, the barriers to career progression within the space also need to be broken down, particularly in tech and finance where women face the ‘triple glass ceilings’ at the intersection of financial, technological, and entrepreneurial gender inequalities. 

Too often women fall behind before they even get to tap on the glass ceiling.  Something is happening on the way up the corporate ladder – a broken rung that is holding women back.  

Employers must help women to build their experience, providing more access to opportunities, development and training.  Those with a strong learning culture enable women to build the necessary experience to succeed.  Then there is recognising this experience through transparent promotions and pay increases. That’s so important.   

Women must be allowed to be mobile within the organisation and encouraged to make bold career moves that require stretching their skills. For too long women have been held back by thinking they are not good enough, whereas the men next to them don’t hesitate.

The brilliant women who have made it to leadership positions across the sector should be held up as role models to inspire and mentor the next generation. The more women are visible at the top – and this includes being literally visible on stage at industry events – the more chance we have of creating momentum in getting more women into fintech.

What advice would you give to young women thinking about starting their own business?

I would tell them to do it!  There are amazing women leading brilliant businesses from the front. Running and starting a business is incredibly fulfilling, and incredibly hard work whatever your gender.

Talk to other founders, seek advice and be curious. Many women strive for perfection, but it is important to learn to make mistakes – because you definitely will along the way. Have confidence in yourself, know you are more than good enough and apologise less! 

By building your own business, you get to create a space that will provide the opportunities, support and recognition to enable other women to thrive and reach the top. This is all incredibly valuable in taking us a step further toward gender parity.

Why do you think it is important to celebrate International Women’s Day?

International Women’s Day focuses minds on the path to gender parity, as well as providing an opportunity to reflect on what progress has been made. 

This year’s International Women’s Day theme is ‘Accelerate Action,’ which I think really gets to the heart of what needs to be done. We cannot wait five generations from now, which is what current projections suggest, to reach full gender parity.  We have made progress in the Fintech and Financial Services sectors, but not enough. 

According to research by the University of Manchester, within fintech, women account for just 4% of CEOs and only 18% of executive committee members. We know that bringing diverse voices to the boardroom leads to better solutions and helps businesses reach their full potential, so why is the gap not closing quicker?  

You set up Chatsworth in 2004. In your opinion, how has fintech and the financial services landscape changed for women in the intervening years?

For a start the gender gap wasn’t really talked about so much in 2004 when we started the agency. Moreover, the client space was very male-dominated. Since then, positive work has been done in opening up the fintech space to women.

In 2016, the Treasury launched The Women in Finance Charter, encouraging the financial services sector to reach gender balance in senior management. It has since had more than 400 signatories, including Chatsworth, covering around 1.3 million employees. Unfortunately, since the charter was launched, gender diversity in management has improved by only one percentage point per year.

Many of the other positive changes for working women came about by accident. It took the pandemic to finally make working from home a realistic option, and not just a thing mums apologetically did to juggle childcare. Overall, female representation in senior management is also improving, albeit slowly. 

In recent years, there has also been a lot more visibility for women in Fintech, with initiatives like Innovate Finance’s Women in FinTech Powerlist doing great work in opening up the fintech landscape to women. 

All of these changes go a long way in helping women to support each other in their career development.