Graduate banker: 'I take great comfort in my religion'

Joris Luyendijk speaks to a young Muslim woman who changed her career in law for one in banking

This monologue is part of a series in which people across the financial sector speak about their working lives

We're meeting for coffee one afternoon in February for a chat about elitism and finance after she wrote in to the blog about her "perspective of an 'outsider' trying to break into the City and the barriers one faces". "In my final year," she wrote, "I was applying for corporate law training contracts and as an ethnic minority, from a working-class background with dyslexia, the challenges were immense."

She is a very cheerful woman in her early 20s of south Asian descent, with a colourful headscarf. She talks much faster than I can write while many of her frequent giggles seem to come with slightly sarcastic undertones. She orders a mango and pineapple juice.

"I really don't get why people on the left get so worked up about Margaret Thatcher. I mean, here's a shopkeeper's daughter who went to Oxford, who fought her way into a public-school male-dominated area, and come out on top. If that's not ultimate feminism, then what is? Her story shows you the opportunities available in the UK.

"I have taken the scarf, a few weeks into my job at the bank. It helps me keep perspective. It tells me, you were not born to take orders, there's more than that. It's just nice the scarf is there, it allows me to feel slightly removed from everything. I mean, I am not living in a war zone or anything, but this job is hard.

"I can feel a slave to capitalism. I know colleagues who go out shopping after hours. But then you're still a slave, you've simply shifted roles. I take great comfort in my religion. When I hear what friends have spent on shoes, on bags, I wonder, why not save it? Why entrap yourself?

"The bank can feel like a robotic, soulless place. My scarf helps remind me not to take things massively serious [sic]. It's a reminder of a value system different from that at the bank. And it is an extra impetus to be polite.

"My parents don't speak English, they have no idea what I do. They have always had this massive respect for authority, for English people. They must be right, the way they do things must be the right way … There's such deference in that generation. Even if I took a job as a teacher I would still make more than double what my father made. In banking that is at least four times, as a starting salary.

"I do send some money over to my parents. That's a duty in my ethnic group, though it's considered better if the sons do it. I give a little, every now and then. Ha ha, don't want them to get trapped in the banker life-style.

"I could probably get away with it, not going into banking but going after a more fulfilling job. But I say, if you are going to be exploited at work, you might as well do it right.

"The workplace I am in now has a very aggressive atmosphere, it's high stress. My job involves managing specialists who sell particular financial products. Basically I must try to get them to increase sales. It's managerial, which is weird for someone straight out of university. What surprised me most so far is how difficult people can be. You think, they are wearing a suit, they must be mature. No way. It's the same insecurities, problems, lack of self-confidence as everyone else. I thought adults grew out of it.

"The negative competition is toxic, I find. When I give a lead to one salesperson and the other is going to be all jealous. I suppose it's part of human nature. I used to take things very personally, but that doesn't work. Sometimes I want to scream: 'Look, it's a job. You sell your time. Don't bring all these emotional needs along.' The root of the problem is this idea of a 'career'. That creates envy.

"Having said all this I am happy to be in finance rather than corporate law. It's so much more meritocratic.

"I went through much of the recruiting circus for corporate law and the brown nosing really got to me there. You need this ability to suck up which I seem to lack. Imagine a partner at a law firm at one of those job fairs, surrounded by five students, all really aggressive, all trying to think up a link to that partner, no matter how tenuous. One partner took to me, and that got me in. But I looked around and realized they all had the same profile. All white, public school, mostly male.

"There was this big day at the corporate law firm, and it was so awkward. Everyone small talking, and privileged kids directing the conversation to remote figures I wouldn't know. 'So, how is so-and-so?' they would ask, and I would have no idea that so-and-so is the headmaster of Eton. But others would, and they would dominate the conversation. Of course, it doesn't help, in social terms, that I don't drink.

"These corporate law partners seemed pretty far removed from reality. I remember at this job-fair dinner one of them asked me what people in my neighbourhood thought of UK immigration policy. So I told them that most people I knew thought it was reasonably fair.

"Then he said: 'Well, that it's great to realise that people think that about us.'

And I went like, err … 'us'. Hello? This is not for me, I thought.

"So what were my options? I could go into consultancy, meaning I had to do all these crazy assessment games to see if I can think logically. Or I could have a go at banking.

"Being at Oxford helped me bridge many of my shortcomings, in terms of a successful career. I would see, that's the way of doing things, the acceptable way. At first it was so intimidating.

"I grew up in the north, in a poor, immigrant neighbourhood. People there are friendly and happy. Neighbours know each other, everybody knows your parents, your parents' friends … The first days at Oxford I was constantly thinking, people here are so rude, so aggressive. Maybe I was overly sensitive? On the other hand, middle-class people can be much more assertive. They seem to be taught how to do really well. At school, at hockey … Their parents go to great expenses, all for them to 'get ahead'. It's all very much about getting ahead for them.

"If I ever have children I want them to get ahead, sure, I want them to go to university. As I said, I went to a state school and really, it's nice if you can give your kids a head start by sending them to a private school. Would I be worried about my kids getting caught up in the getting-ahead game? Well, they would still have their religion, wouldn't they?

"Going to a top university has changed me, profoundly I'd say. I've become more conservative, politically, more convinced of the need for individual responsibility. Living off welfare is not OK, I've become more right wing on that issue, now that I have done it myself, working I mean. I have taken the flack, and gone in when I don't want to. So why would others not do that?

"I do have doubts about the system by which universities take in quotas of underprivileged kids, even when those kids would not qualify academically. What happens is, you set these kids up for an enormous disappointment later on. They think, I went to a top university, now I should have a top career. But if you are not good enough, you won't have that career. Because businesses hire on the basis of competence.

"There is definitely pressure on students like me to go for a big job. You had a successful academic career, well, what do you do? Then there are your father and mother. Until recently the ideal for south Asian parents like mine was for their sons to become a doctor, and for their daughters to marry one. Now, it's bankers that are on top of the wish list. As a woman from my background, there is this deep-seated urge to find a husband who is even more successful, who's doing even better than you. That's really hard if you are in banking, because there are so few successful males from my ethnic group.

"I am not like that, but quite a few young women from my ethnic background have expressed the wish to use their job at the bank to meet a husband and then get out. They want the lifestyle that comes with a bankers' salary, but without the work. If they marry a banker they still get the prestige, they can still say 'I used to work at bank X'. I don't hold it against them, it's really difficult to maintain a life if both partners work 9 to 9. For women looking for a banker to marry, Canary Wharf is ideal. Where else would you meet such a man?

"The City is actually ridiculously tolerant. It's quite amusing, I think people are wooed by me? And they're overly nice about the scarf, asking: do you shake hands? I have to say, this is really nice and quite different from my experiences in continental Europe.

"Some time ago I spoke to a retired policeman, back home. He said he had enjoyed every day at work. I find that incomprehensible.

"There's such a difference with uni. I used to have four lectures a week. I am telling you, there's a reason why you pay to go to university, but get paid for work. Work is terrible. The worst? That you have to be there.

"Many of my classmates took a gap year. If I did that, I'd feel selfish. I need to start making money, I can't afford to indulge. Now I am on the train in the morning and I wonder: is this my life?

"The biggest misunderstanding among the general public about finance? It's not all bad. It's also a chance to make something of yourself."

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