83% of Gen Z women say they’ve been talked over by a male colleague at work. 68% say they’ve been dismissed outright, and almost four in ten say they’ve felt pressure to downplay their femininity just to be taken seriously.

That’s according to a UK survey of female employees published this year, and Gen Z women came out worse on every one of those measures than any other age group surveyed, including women decades into their careers.

Those are the women walking into fintech right now. Gen Z now make up around 15% of the UK workforce, and that share is only going to grow as more of the generation reaches prime earning age. So, it’s safe to say that most fintech companies are very actively trying to engage, attract, retain and win them over.

While this survey wasn’t specifically about fintech itself, I’m sure we’ve all seen the endless articles about the industry not being as progressive as we’d hoped.

So when the youngest women entering the workforce are telling us, in fairly stark numbers, that they’re being talked over and made to shrink themselves just to be heard, we ought to listen. Right?

Here’s why I think this data matters more for fintech than it might first appear, and what I think founders should do about it.

Why the youngest women are getting it worst in fintech

Fintech loves to call itself a disruptor. We’re younger than traditional finance. Faster. Less corporate. We pride ourselves on moving quickly and doing things differently.

In many ways, this is the case. The average fintech founder is around 34, much younger than the typical bank executive. More than half of the industry’s workforce is between 22 and 44 years old.

On paper, that should be great news for young women. Younger companies often feel less intimidating. Your manager might only be a few years older than you. The hierarchy feels flatter. Everyone’s on first-name terms.

But that’s exactly what makes the problem so complicated.

When everyone feels like friends, it becomes much harder to know when something has crossed a line. Startup culture often blurs work and social life. There’s the after-work drinks, the Slack jokes, the team trips and the “we’re like family” mentality.

Many fintechs also pride themselves on having flat hierarchies instead of rigid corporate structures. This has led to a lot having lean HR teams, or none at all in their early stages. With flatter management structures, there are often fewer formal reporting channels and less experienced leadership when problems do arise.

Wharton research found that startups advertising a flat structure saw female applicants drop by 25%. No bosses and no red tape doesn’t read as egalitarian to a lot of women. It reads as no formal channel to fix it if something goes wrong. That’s not the kind of disruption fintech should be proud of.

So what should fintech founders do?

My biggest tip here is that, you can solve a lot of these challenges by just paying attention to the small behaviours that shape a culture every single day. Here are my top five tips that should become practice at your company.

1. Stop treating assertive as the only credible tone

A lot of workplace culture, especially in fast-moving startups, quietly rewards the blunt and unemotional communication style. 

Women who communicate collaboratively, ask questions before stating opinions, or soften a disagreement are often read as less confident, even when they’re saying something sharper than the loudest person in the room. 

I wrote a piece for City AM earlier this year about how the old model of female leadership, cold, guarded, always in control, is going out of fashion because it simply doesn’t work as well anymore. The alternative I’d argue for is what I call post-fear leadership: a style built on openness rather than control, where admitting you don’t have every answer isn’t treated as a weakness.

Founders need to notice when a quieter idea gets ignored, only to be praised five minutes later when someone louder repeats it. And when it happens, call it out.

The quickest way to build a more inclusive culture is to stop treating one communication style as the only credible one.

2. Separate “culture fit” from “acts like the founders”

Every startup wants people who are a good culture fit.

The problem is that “culture fit” can easily become shorthand for someone I’d happily have a beer with.

Someone who dresses like the founders. Jokes like them. Thinks like them. Socialises like them.

Before long, you’re not hiring people who share your values. You’re hiring people who feel familiar.

The best founders ask themselves a simple question after every interview: Would I still think this person wasn’t a culture fit if they had exactly the same skills and values but a completely different personality?

Because a team where everyone looks, sounds and behaves the same isn’t inclusive. It’s just comfortable.

3. Show that there’s more than one way to lead

Representation matters. But only if people can actually see themselves in it.

If every senior woman has had to become tougher, louder and more traditionally masculine to succeed, junior women get the message pretty quickly.

Success starts to look like becoming someone else. Instead, celebrate different leadership styles.

Champion the woman who leads with empathy. The one who builds consensus. The one who’s warm, collaborative and still gets incredible results.

Young women shouldn’t feel they have to leave part of themselves behind to move up.

4. Build structure into who gets heard

Casual doesn’t have to mean chaotic. 

Round-robin input in meetings, written contributions submitted ahead of a discussion, or simply a habit of naming who hasn’t spoken yet all cost nothing and stop airtime defaulting to whoever’s loudest or most comfortable interrupting. 

This matters more in flat, informal cultures, not less, because there’s no formal agenda or hierarchy doing that work for you by default.

5. Make speaking up feel safe, not risky

The single biggest reason casual dismissiveness goes unchallenged is that calling it out, in a culture that prides itself on being relaxed and direct, makes the person raising it look uptight. 

Founders need to say out loud, repeatedly, that flagging being talked over or dismissed is welcomed, not just tolerated, and then prove it by acting on it visibly the first few times someone does. Psychological safety isn’t a poster in the office. It’s what happens the first time someone actually tests it.

Fintech didn’t invent this dynamic, and I’m not here to pretend it did. But an industry that built its whole identity on being different owes its youngest women more than a flatter org chart and a beanbag. It owes them a culture where being talked over isn’t standard, and being visibly, unapologetically themselves isn’t a professional liability.

Final Thoughts

Fintech has always sold itself on the idea that it’s building the future. But the future isn’t just faster payments or smarter AI. It’s the people who choose to build those products.

Gen Z women are telling us something isn’t working. Not quietly, either. They’re telling us in surveys, on social media, in exit interviews and, increasingly, by walking away from workplaces where they don’t feel heard.

We can dismiss that as another conversation about workplace culture. Or we can see it for what it really is: an early warning sign.

Because the companies that listen now will build much stronger, happier teams,

The best ideas don’t always come from the loudest person in the room. The best leaders don’t all sound the same. The best cultures aren’t the ones where everyone fits in effortlessly. They’re the ones where people don’t feel they have to change who they are to belong.

Fintech has never been afraid to rethink old systems. That’s exactly what made the industry exciting in the first place.

Maybe it’s time we applied that same mindset to the way we build our workplaces.

Because if the next generation of women still feels they have to speak louder, act tougher or become someone else just to succeed, then we haven’t disrupted nearly as much as we think we have.

The post Fintech’s Youngest Women are its Loudest Warning Sign appeared first on The Fintech Times.