9.7%

Fewer than 10 percent of mutual funds and ETF’s in the US have a female fund manager, down from a measly 11.4% in 2008.  And the US is not alone… only five countries worldwide are over 20% (Singapore is highest, at 30%).

Are we under-counting?  Probably not – this data is from Morningstar, which studied over 26,000 fund managers in 56 countries.

As with most interesting issues, there is no single, simple explanation here – we can see important and intertwined factors at play in every layer of decision making, both individual and institutional.

Because it is both complex and complicated, lots of folks have given up on engaging with numbers like these… it’s too hard, too slow to change, and really, are we even sure this is a bad thing?

To which I simply ask, aren’t you even curious? Don’t you see a datapoint like this and think, hmm, I wonder why?

If you’re not curious, that’s okay – but trust me, un-curious people make crummy investors, regardless of gender.

And if you are just a little bit curious, here is an interesting Bloomberg compendium on women in finance, and here is an interesting NY Times article on the same subject.