Stacey Parsons, from Capital Markets to FinTech: Women, Wealth and the Future of Investing

And so just moving on to the next question is a topic of the, in 2023, you were involved in celebrating 50 years of women on the London Stock Exchange.

And looking back over those 50 years and your own career, how much has really changed for women in financial services?

So the anniversary of the 50th year of women being able to become part of the London Stock Exchange was really, really important to me.

And actually, this will be very poignant to some of your members from a regional perspective.

We used to have regional stock exchanges.

And one of the things that really hit home for me was this idea that we were celebrating the London Stock Exchange allowing women into the stock market 50 years ago in 1973.

Actually, that was a story about the regional stock exchanges because a lot of our regional stock exchanges were much more at the forefront of allowing women through.

And I probably should explain a bit of a background on this to some of your listeners.

We were very stereotyped at that time that I think the Equality Act had just come in for women.

It was of an era, only 50, what, three or four years ago now, where women were probably unlikely to be able to get a mortgage on their own.

You were probably unlikely to be able to have a job or a progressive job or career in the City of London.

So that particular year, for the 50th anniversary was very, very important to me because I wanted people to understand that it wasn't that long ago that you weren't allowed to have certain permissions because perhaps you weren't married or perhaps you had a foreign surname.

And it's easy to forget that that was only 50 years ago.

What was wonderful about the event is that we had a significant proportion of women come forward who didn't feel like they'd changed the world and they really had changed the world.

One lady told me how she couldn't wear trousers until 1986.

I mean, 1986, that's really unbelievable.

But with that came forward a lot of kinship, a lot of spirit.

We also spoke to women and a lot of women who talked about the fact that they were really respected by their male counterparts.

Although I watched a fantastic video which said that women should never be allowed on the stock market floor at the time to become partners because they simply didn't have female toilets for them.

So you can hear these conversations.

But look...

We look back on that in jest.

We've moved much further forward than that today.

This is not about criticising generations previous to us.

It's much more about realising the journey that we came on over 50 years.