Women in Financial Services
E2 Inspire - With Betty - Starting my financial services career in the 1950’s
Mark.Freed / 18 Aug 2020
I’m sure that most of our members first came to us for help with their careers. And for some, that’s as far as it goes. But my goal has always been to build something more than just a career network. I want E2W to be a community of mutual support where we take time to provide help when we can – and ask for it when we need it.
This is why we run a mentoring programme and it’s the reason for our regular Zoom calls. Once lockdown started, we knew that many people might be struggling with the sudden isolation and we wanted to give our members a way to see familiar faces on a regular basis – and, hopefully, learn something new as well.
Now lockdown is lifting, we’ve seen just how popular these calls are and we’ve decided to continue them. This gives us the chance to cover more topics and bring in some fresh perspectives. And in the spirit of the E2W family, I was very happy to introduce this week’s speaker, my mum, Betty Freed.
Betty told us about her childhood during and after the war, and the expectations that when school was over, a woman would go into one of the two ‘acceptable’ careers of nursing or teaching – or just start a family.
Betty, however, went into financial services; a very formal environment, with little tolerance for mistakes and no real career path for women. We then heard about the jobs she worked at throughout her life and the way that work culture changed for women over the years.
We finished with some great questions for Betty, and for me, about her life, her career and her involvement in the creation of E2W.
If you didn’t get the chance to dial in on the day, please do watch it on catch-up. I hope you enjoy it.
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