Women in mortgage broking are “blessed” they’re not treated any differently to their male counterparts, says The Loans Café founder Anne-Marie Syme.
Women in mortgage broking are “blessed” they’re not treated any differently to their male counterparts, says The Loans Café founder Anne-Marie Syme.
Syme, who became one of the first Australian women to run a mortgage broking business when she opened the country’s first shop-front brokerage in 1998, says female brokers in Australia are treated with fairness and respect.
“There’s a lot of speculation in business that women are treated differently, and I think that we’re blessed in the mortgage industry that we’re not.”
The ex-MFAA president of WA says her own success story is a clear example of the lack of gender discrimination in the broking industry.
“Men don’t try to hold you down, never once have I experienced that.”
In fact, says Symes, it’s often easier for women to be successful in traditionally male-dominated industries.
“In some respects it’s quite the opposite of what people are always saying because men fall over themselves to help you, and they tend to do that less with other blokes.”
Women who enter the workforce with the attitude that women are treated unfairly, or who hold an unfounded sense of entitlement, will only attract criticism and negativity, says Syme.
“Some women have their ego step in and say ‘I’m better because I’m a chick and men are a pile of bastards and it’s a sight harder to get anywhere as a woman’. It’s rubbish, absolute rubbish. And then they wonder why men treat them the way they do. Attitude controls altitude in this business.”
Look out for more thought leadership from some of the nation’s leading female brokers in the next edition of MPA, out July 22.
