Traditionally, banking and finance have been male domains; however, in recent years women have been attempting to challenge this status quo. Investment management and the trading floor (despite being the most lucrative sub-sector of the industry) stubbornly remains 'a jungle of chest-pounding males' (Lewis, 1989: 9). This paper aims to address the current gap in the literature concerning the educational choices and subsequent career-orientated decisions made by women which influences them to opt into or out of careers in investment management. This paper, while recognising choice is a multifaceted, intricate process, will concentrate on one strand of the literature, namely the individual factors which have been put forward to explain the existence of gendered behaviour in educational and occupational choice. A conceptual model is presented within this paper which identifies three key clusters of individual factors that influence educational and occupational choice. This model assists in addressing the question of whether men and women's educational and occupational choices differ not because of stereotypes embedded by society, family and institutions, but because of our inherent personality traits.