Having It All, Someday: HSBC Celebrates International Women's Day

Why are professional women still struggling to 'have it all'? Anne-Marie Slaughter, the Princeton professor and former State Department official who famously asked that question last summer, tried to help HSBC answer it late last week.

Slaughter, whose summer cover story for The Atlantic kick-started a round of discussions about the challenges women still face balancing their careers with their personal obligations, spoke at an event celebrating International Women's Day. In her opening remarks and in a subsequent panel discussion, she spoke about the social expectations and gender-specific professional obstacles that women face in industries including, but hardly limited to, banking.

"Even now, I'll get, 'She seems awfully ambitious,'" as a reaction to speaking up, Slaughter said. "And we're in a room where everyone is ambitious."

Slaughter, a professor of international affairs and the former director of policy planning for the State Department, was addressing HSBC employees and their customers Friday. She was soon joined on stage by some other ambitious and accomplished industry figures, including Irene Dorner, the head of HSBC's U.S. operations and the woman American Banker named "Most Powerful" in the industry last year.

Dorner, always a frank and funny speaker, told a story about being the only woman in meetings at the Bank of England, where she searched in vain for any women's restrooms. She followed that anecdote with an appalling tale of how as recently as 2005, some male colleagues scheduled a conference she was to attend at a club that would not allow her — or any women — into its bar.

"It worries me that there are not enough women at the top to make a difference in traction," Dorner said.

While the panel revolved around the banking industry, the speakers also acknowledged the larger conversations occurring in corporate America about how women are attempting to surmount professional barriers and personal expectations. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has just published a book exhorting women to "lean in" and to stop passing up opportunities at work because they think they will eventually need to devote more attention to demands at home. Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer has been in the news for her efforts to turn around the Internet company, including a much-criticized decision to no longer allow employees to work from home.

The other panelists were Sharon Katz-Pearlman, a principal at KPMG, and Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota and onetime presidential candidate who now runs the Financial Services Roundtable. The panel was moderated by American Banker editor-at-large Barbara Rehm.