By Charlotte Ryan
Camilla Sutton climbed through the ranks to become global head of foreign exchange at Scotiabank in Toronto. Along the way, she put up with being asked if she ought to travel while she had small children at home and being mistaken for a junior employee. And then there was the day when she was the only woman in a top-level meeting — yet again.
Like many other women in the $6.6-trillion a day currency market, Sutton eventually left trading. She now works for a company aiming to improve gender diversity.
“Very senior women in the industry are going to be the only woman at the table at every table they’re sitting at,” Sutton said. “It becomes very tiring and exhausting for women who are at senior levels within the industry to continually be faced with the everyday microaggressions.”
For some female professionals, it’s worse than that. Chau Pham, a former Morgan Stanley vice president in foreign-exchange sales in the U.S., said in January she was fired without explanation 22 days after returning from maternity leave. Stacey Macken, a broker, won an employment suit in September against BNP Paribas SA in London after saying she…
