Sarah Megan Thomas in the brand-new film Equity. Photo: Courtesy of Broad Street Pictures
Equity, a brand-new film out Friday, subverts the regular Wall Street tale. There are no big swinging dicks. The main characters are women, and incredibly, they are not wives, prostitutes, or cocaine conduits. Instead, they are actual individuals talking regarding work, driving the stock market, and (gasp) obtaining pregnant.
The film centers on Naomi Bishop (Anna Gunn), an investment banker tasked along with taking a promising brand-new tech firm public, and her junior banker, Erin (Sarah Megan Thomas), that should step up to guide the deal. Alysia Reiner (of Orange Is the brand-new Black fame) plays an old friend of Naomi’s that gets in the way.
Thomas and Reiner’s company, Broad Street Pictures, reached out to much more compared to 100 men and women in finance and enlisted the guidance and money of a few of the most powerful women on the Street. As a result, the characters’ struggles versus the glass ceiling feel nuanced and honest.
When the junior banker Erin learns she is pregnant, she decides to hide it from her bosses. On Tuesday night, at a screening of the film (hosted by the Cinema Society, Bloomberg, and Thomas Pink), Thomas told the Cut they based this individual plot point on the experiences of numerous women they interviewed.
“If they were along with child, they wouldn’t get hold of the promotion or they wouldn’t get hold of paid as considerably that year,” Thomas said. “So they hid it for 25 weeks, which is a long time. And some women we talked to didn’t feel adore they could return in to the job force after having a baby, adore if they took much more compared to eight weeks off, that was a problem.”
Linnea Roberts, a former Goldman Sachs partner and an investor in the film, said she hoped the movie would certainly get hold of individuals talking.
“So numerous Wall Street movies are fairly farcical, and I was fairly happy that it felt fairly real,” she said. “I have actually done diversity at Goldman for the last several years, and I wanted it to be a discussion piece. I’m okay along with it being tough. It’s not a recruiting film. Don’t reveal it to your daughters that are thinking regarding Wall Street. However it is an excellent automobile to have actually the conversation — is it still adore this?”
So last night the Cut asked four of the film’s powerful female advisers and investors, “Just what is it actually adore to be pregnant on Wall Street?”
Barbara Byrne, vice-chairman of investment banking at Barclays
“I had four kids. They kept wondering every time, ‘She’s not coming back’; I constantly came back. Any person along with this numerous children knows you have actually to return or you’ll shed your mind. I had the very first maternity leave at Lehman Brothers. I went in and asked my boss, ‘What’s maternity leave?’ And he said, ‘6 weeks disability.’ I said, ‘Well, wait a min — my classmate’ — I won’t say his name since he’s still on the Street— ‘is on sick leave for three months since he went on a client junket and ate poor shellfish and got hepatitis. So he turns yellow’ — he is the CEO of a firm today — ‘and I’m developing a future taxpayer, and he gets three months and I don’t?’ Then they gave it to me. I believe their believed was We’ll provide it to you, there’s just one of you, However once you have actually established precedent, that’s what’s important. Establishing precedent and opening up that channel. Points are obtaining better, adore the president of the United States, the prime minister of Fantastic Britain — and that is power.”
Linda Zwack Munger, former institutional bond salesperson at Lehman Brothers
“It actually nails the nuanced dilemmas that women have actually that men don’t necessarily have. I went through two pregnancies while functioning Wall Street. adore Erin, I did my ideal to hide them because, as a woman, you had to guarantee you are taken so seriously at any sort of turn and anything that may provide a person the feeling that you have actually a foot out the door, you worry about, in a method that men don’t have actually to worry about. I couldn’t hide my pregnancy for fairly long, However we all of did it. You simply kept fairly quiet until it was obvious that you were pregnant; you didn’t talk regarding it. You held out as long as you could. To their credit, I felt fairly fairly treated. However until you go through it the very first time, you are strolling on eggshells wondering Just what the consequences may be, if you are going to shed ground, if you are going to be dinged in your compensation since you are pregnant and going on maternity leave. It definitely has actually gotten better, However it is probably not where it could be. The whole tip of maternity and paternity leave has actually got a long method to go.”
Candy Straight, former advisory director of Securitas Capital
“We haven’t seen women on Wall Street in high-powered positions. We haven’t even actually seen them at the vice-president level, which that character Erin is at. Women do shed pay equity As quickly as they go off to have actually a child, and that shouldn’t be, in my opinion. You Can easily already know why the character Erin is hiding her pregnancy, and numerous women do. I didn’t have actually children, However numerous of my friends hid their pregnancies until the fifth or sixth month if they could. In the ’70s, they were hiding their pregnancies — in the ’80s, ’90s, and still today.”
