The Triple Glass Ceiling: the gendered and racialised inequalities of FinTech

This doctoral research will apply a critical perspective to FinTech, furthering my research interests that began with my undergraduate dissertation. A significant paradox exists: FinTech is advancing financial services, whilst perpetuating discrimination against women (Sparks and Eckenrode, 2020; Clempner et al., 2020; Brett, 2018). The gender inequalities pervasive across FinTech are the result of discriminatory practices in both the financial (c.f., Ellingrud et al., 2021; McDowell, 1997) and technology (c.f., Nash and Moore, 2019; Massey, 1995) sectors, and within entrepreneurship (c.f. Rose, 2019; Balachandra et al., 2019; Kanze et al., 2017), culminating in a 'triple glass ceiling' for women in FinTech to navigate.

The inequalities within FinTech clearly extend across multiple axes of difference. My doctoral research will critically engage with FinTech by drawing upon feminist thought, postcolonial, and decolonial scholarship.

Specifically, the research will be structured on asking 'what', 'why', and 'so what'. The initial focus will be on producing a detailed analysis of what the current state of gender and racial diversity is because a detailed quantification of contemporary FinTech diversity remains alarmingly absent in the literature. This will progress to interrogating the racialised and gendered barriers to participation - the why. An important dimension of this enquiry will be investigating any geographical impact: how does the culture and governance of a country influence FinTech diversity? I will develop this to also examine the diversity and barriers within the investment industry (Dempsey, 2021, Kanze et al., 2017).
The final part of the analysis will explore the so what; the impact on the wider society. In particular, I want to research the link between the FinTech ecosystem diversity and consumer financial inclusivity (Chen et al., 2021; Bhagat and Roderick, 2020). I will also interweave this with FemTech, a more recent, under-researched phenomenon (FemTech Analytics, 2021; Faubion, 2021).

The research will take a mixed methods approach. I will produce a comprehensive database drawn from 1000 FinTech companies across different growth stages, geographies, and subsectors. Each company will be assessed across various measures, for example, executive committee diversity and funding amounts. Statistical analysis will then be applied to investigate particular patterns. 100 semi-structured interviews with a diverse range of individuals within the FinTech ecosystem will also be carried out. Individuals of all genders and from a range of backgrounds will be interviewed, drawn from across the FinTech industry: from FinTech CEOs to new starters, founders, and FinTech angel
investors and venture capitalists. The inclusion of interviews is reflective of the increasing uptake of qualitative methods by financial geographers, positively influencing the discipline (Wójcik, 2021). Interviews will allow in-depth lived experiences to be captured , using the interviewee's own frame of reference (Seitz, 2016; McDowell, 1998). This stretches the analysis beyond the numerical into something more tangible and less abstract, which is important for understanding the day-to-day lived experiences for marginalised individuals in FinTech.

There is significant potential for my doctoral research to have a profound impact within academic and non-academic circles. A critical interrogation of FinTech is extremely important because of FinTech's growing dominance. Current attention is largely centred on heralding FinTech as a financial zeitgeist full of innovation and potential (Kalifa, 2021; Makina, 2019). However, this elides the significant discriminatory practices that give rise to pervasive inequalities, notably across the axes of gender and race.