Key Takeaways
- Only 3% of Norway-domiciled funds are managed exclusively by women.
- Including mixed teams, roughly one in four funds has at least one female manager.
- Mixed teams manage 22% of funds which account for 34% of total assets under management.
Morningstar data shows that the Norwegian fund market remains overwhelmingly male. Across all 349 Norway-domiciled funds 11 are managed by a woman or an all-female team, accounting for 3%. Another 78 funds, or 22%, are run by mixed-gender teams, while the remaining 260 funds, or 74%, are managed exclusively by men.
The share of all-female managed funds has slipped from 4% to 3% over the past year, while mixed-gender teams increased slightly from 21% to 23%.
Knut Hellandsvik, chief investment officer at DNB Asset Management, says change is needed.
“There is a clear need to increase the number of women in the fund management industry, as their current representation is significantly lower than that of society at large,” he says. “We place great importance on having a variety of perspectives when making investment decisions, as this diversity helps to challenge prevailing opinions and reduce the risk of groupthink.”
Mixed Teams Manage Larger Funds
Mixed-gender teams account for 22% of funds but manage 34% of total assets - approximately NOK 834 billion. All-male teams, while representing 75% of funds, manage 63% of the assets. All-female teams are unchanged at 3% on both measures.
Larger mandates typically require larger management teams, which are statistically more likely to include at least one female manager. This is consistent with a broader industry trend: Asset management firms globally have shifted away from the solo portfolio manager model toward team-based structures to reduce key-person risk and manage successions.
Female Fund Managers Are Scarce Across the Nordics
Norway’s numbers sit in the middle of the Nordic range, when looking at overall representation of women amongst fund managers. Sweden has the highest share of all-female managed funds at 8%, up from 7% the year before. Finland follows at 6%, up from 5%. Denmark stands at 3%, though up from 1% previous year.
However, data on fund manager names are incomplete in several Nordic markets, with 16% missing in Finland and 21% in Denmark. While Norway’s figures are nearly complete, gaps elsewhere mean cross-country comparisons may not fully reflect the underlying gender distribution.
Does Gender Affect Fund Performance?
A 2025 Morningstar study examining the relationship between portfolio manager gender and fund performance globally found no significant difference. Women-only and men-only teams were most similar in terms of risk-adjusted returns, with roughly 30% of funds in the top quartile and 20% in the bottom quartile for both groups. Mixed-gender teams were distributed at 25% in each quartile. Gender, the study concluded, is not a predictor of returns.
Work/Life Factors Behind the Gender Gap
DNB’s Hellandsvik points to several issues behind the lack of female fund managers.
“In conversations with others in the industry, it’s evident that we all share a similar concern: Far fewer women than men apply for open positions. This trend is also apparent at the entry level, which is particularly surprising given that most universities we recruit from have an even gender balance among their graduates.”
He argues that the industry needs to strengthen its collaboration with academic institutions to bring more women into the field. Another issue is the limited availability of new positions across the industry, representing a significant obstacle to achieving better gender balance.
“We have taken concrete steps to address this challenge. Over the past five years, we have welcomed nine female investment managers and analysts to our team, a development that reflects our ongoing commitment to fostering greater diversity within our organization. In addition, half of our summer interns last year were women”, says Hellandsvik.
Mariann Stoltenberg Lind, senior portfolio manager at Odin Forvaltning, describes a similar picture but notes that while the industry has made some progress in recruiting women into analyst roles, retaining them remains a challenge.
“You lose women somewhere along the way – that is, before they reach the point where they become fund managers", she says
Stoltenberg Lind believes many women enjoy working in fund management, but that there can be challenges in combining the job with family life.
“For example, returning to work after maternity leave can be difficult. Greater flexibility from employers could help ease that transition and encourage more women to stay in the industry and progress to fund manager roles,” she adds.
