Chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Brooksley Born, accused the futures industry of lacking sufficient minority and women members. “For too long many of these jobs have been filled based on friendships and family relationships, and an incidental characteristic of these relationships has been that they usually did not include persons of color,” said Born. “Likewise,” said Born, “there are very few Asian Americans or Hispanic Americans in these positions and few women.”
Born singled out the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) during a speech at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, noting that out of 6,000 CBOT and CME members, only 30 are black.
Born called for a “proactive recruitment” of minorities and women. She claimed that “the industry will do itself a disservice if it fails to seek out people from the broadest possible base of participation — eliminating race, ethnicity and gender barriers.”
