Karen Firestone reports:

Financial institutions portray women today as competent and self-confident, and often feature attractive, middle-aged advisors talking to couples in which the woman is similarly well dressed and clearly attentive. According to Dr. Emma Firestone, who has studied the audience perception and response to images and words in media and entertainment, from a cognitive perspective, “It makes sense for advertisers to present women as strong, well-educated consumers. This is appealing to women who see an attractive self-image reflected back at them, and to men, who are flattered by the idea that smart, self-possessed, and financially secure women are their own life partners.” Men are much more likely today, than decades ago, to be comfortable with and appreciate their spouses as full partners in their own financial decision-making – at the same time, imagery of supportive female financial advisors plays into comforting stereotypes of the woman-as-helpmeet, perhaps humanizing an industry consumers view as confusing or even threatening.

However, there is a trapdoor in this picture. The rise in strong feminine images in financial advertising also coincides with some very negative portrayals of men in the industry: the testosterone-driven traders and gamblers who led us over the financial cliff in 2008.  As Christine Lagarde, Director of the International Monetary Fund stated only partly in jest, if the firm had been called “Lehman Sisters” there might not have been the same resulting devastation to world economies. Extensive research suggests that if financial firms had fewer men, those firms would have taken on less risk. Both headlines and Hollywood have also focused on the antics of a few particularly macho financial executives.  It may be that today’s financial firms are trying to portray a “feminized” face to distance themselves from stereotypes like these.