This semester we were asked by a finance instructor for tips on how to increase the number of women in her finance classes. She said that there is not a single woman in her class; all her finance MBAs are men.

Ethics is elemental (although this has nothing to do with gender.) Finance is often - and this is my personal opinion - taught in ways that purport it is value neutral; the quantitative aspect of it further reinforces this. The work is somewhat presented as pure and practical and free of ethical debates, when in fact so much of what gets done is none of those things. The systems thinking aspect of it is lost in the compartmentalization. Perhaps it is a grave oversimplification, but for some people being involved in, say, a defense deal, is going to feel like they're also indirectly involved in weapons production and its end results. Life isn't always simple, but if I invest in this, I'm going to feel like I'm profiting from this. If you didn't pitch that weapons manufacturer financing - if nobody pitched that deal - where would the resources come to expand production in that segment of the economy?

If you don't water the seeds, they won't grow into trees. And finance courses, in my (limited) experience, don't prepare you to tackle the ethics side of things. What do you do if you are assigned to a group that deals with the producer of WMDs? Many, many women and men alike find even the prospect of such a scenario extremely troublesome. I'll be the first to argue that to do so - to raise the issue of whether, say, financing a certain project or company is ethical - is still more often than not considered naive or self aggrandizing. Someone once accused me of having a big ego (and he may well be right, but it was nonetheless an accusation hard to refute without fueling the fire), when he praised Michael Milken in an introductory CoFi class, and I raised my hand to point out Mr Milken was in prison for insider trading. Likewise, back when it was still legal, I was wondering why banks were taking research analysts to pitches and roadshows. These are (or were) not, some argue, strictly speaking "finance" issues. But they deal with the foundations, the building blocks, the ethos of the field. If legal professionals or healthcare workers were accused of corruption, malpractice, and failure to follow their professional oath, we'd say something - and people do. So why can some other professionals hide under the guise of numbers and the detached middlemannish nature of the business?

What we do and how we do it matters, and it has consequences. You cannot throw a rock in the water and expect no ripples. But as a finance student you are rarely taught or encouraged to approach the value judgments you might have to make in the field of finance, when hundreds of millions of dollars or euros literally start to seem like peanuts and when a deal is supposed to be just a deal, no questions asked. I argue that finance students still aren't taught to engage eloquently and reasonably with the qualitative or ethical side of the subject, and when you think about it, you're sort of lost.

There are sustainable investment ventures, which is great. There are sustainability indexes, which is great too. This blog entry doesn't concern those; it concerns the mainstream aspects of the business, and why someone might be turned off. Many women as well as men are, I believe, turned off from the field of finance, because they sense the arrogance and the detachment from the rest of society. For an industry that sells the tenets of efficiency and change, there are many examples that suggest Wall Street professionals themselves are hardly welcoming of it.

You can't play fair, if people egregiously bend the rules decade after decade and get away with it. I'm not talking about bending the rules a little bit or cutting the corners a little bit. I'm talking about outright misconduct that appears to be obvious to anyone but the offender, who is like the emperor walking naked down Main Street, insisting his subjects compliment his attire. You can't instill the fairness mindset, if individuals who should set the standards abuse the system to their advantage. I have never understood why white collars and years of education make misconduct less reprehensible. You would think people with a higher education are better equipped to tell the difference between right and wrong, reasonable and unreasonable, acceptable and unacceptable. In answering the question, "how would we graduate more female finance MBAs", I would say, these issues must be addressed. How do you address them, especially if most people on the street think there's no problem? I have no idea. This is an issue that polarizes people, compartmentalizes them by class and gender, and easily alienates men from women even further. There's a huge issue there. It's not only about making the business woman friendly; it's about making it fair and ethical and transparent and open minded.