FINANCIAL BUSINESS EDUCATION

Abstract

In this paper, we reveal the neglected role of business education in legitimizing and performing gendered discourses in financial services work in London's financial district. In particular, by combining research on gendered subjectivities in elite labour markets with Foucauldian-inspired cultural economy research on the processes of financial subjectification, we argue that business education played an important role in performing discourses of idealised investment banking subjects who embodied essentialised masculine qualities during the period of rapid financialized growth in the 2000s. We then examine the temporary fragility of these ‘masters of the universe’ by exploring how the power of investment banking subjects was momentarily destabilised as the global financial crisis was scripted in public discourse as being caused in part by the dominance of hyper-masculine investment bankers. By focusing on the relationship between educational practices and the gendered nature of financial services work, our analysis responds to calls to develop a more politically engaged cultural economy of finance by raising normative questions concerning the financial subjectivities that could, or should, be called forth within the post-crisis international financial system.

Keywords:

• investment banking
• City of London
• gender
• financial crisis
• financial subjects
• business education

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research reported on in this paper was funded by The Nuffield Foundation (SGS/3204) and an ESRC First Grant (RES-061-25-0071). We are also grateful to the individuals who freely gave up time to be interviewed and the reviewers and guest editors whose comments clarified the arguments in the paper.