Unfortunately, far too often, the opposite is true. I’ve heard and seen horror stories from the front lines: the guy who retires a couple of years after acquiring your business and hands you off to his son-in-law or a junior broker who just left business school. The mansplainer who takes only the husband seriously and barely lets a widow get a word in as he rejiggers her estate. Or the one who scales back his hours to two days a week but doesn’t bother to tell you because he has collected enough clients to fund a perpetual state of semiretirement — logging enough days with his second wife down in Florida to claim residency and avoid state income tax.

While gendering any ability or trait can make people uncomfortable in these forward-thinking times, which sex seems better equipped to help families nurture and protect their nest egg?

The gender gap in finance looks increasingly like not only an ethical quandary but also a financial blow to millions of households. And its persistence stems from both explicit historical exclusion and a self-selecting process, in which the crowd most attracted to finance’s clubby reputation pushes hardest to get in, then feels most at ease once there, perpetuating the reality.

Two generations ago, when newspapers still ran gender-segregated ads, there were virtually no women on Wall Street aside from the secretaries. But once women were grudgingly welcomed to the business world, Wall Street was not their first choice. Male brokers largely worked for commissions alone — an “eat what you kill” mentality that did not appeal to women. Instead, professional women gravitated to stable sources of income in fields like law, education or medicine.

Those divides have a way of calcifying. The Chartered Financial Analyst Institute — the premier global association for investment professionals — surveyed its members in 2016 and found that 83 percent of women and 80 percent of men chose their career before age 25. Only 18 percent of its members are women.

The public doesn’t perceive brokers as loyal stewards of their clients and neither do enough young women considering career options. First, they’ll need to see it to believe it.

Informal mentorship is great, but women need institutional advocacy, not just someone who is willing to grab a cup of coffee and chat. Firms should also take a look at their investment committee members and client-facing advisers. If they’re mainly men, there’s a problem.