Irene Dorner blames herself — and her female colleagues — forthe lack of women on Wall Street.

As the chief executive of HSBC USA,Ms. Dorner, 58, is one of the few women to have breached the upperlevels of finance. But along the way, Ms. Dorner said, she didn'tpush hard enough to change the “status quo” on male-dominatedtrading floors and executive suites. Rather, she said, she kept herhead down, focusing on her own career.

“The women at the top of organizations that I know will tell youthat we think that we've made it because we were born the way weare and can play by these rules without feeling damaged by them,”Ms. Dorner said. “Or, we've learned how to play by these rules anduse them to our own advantage.”

“I suspect that we were simply not very good role models,” sheadded. “And there aren't enough of us to be visible so that peoplecan work out how to do what we did.”

Ms. Dorner and her peers in the upper echelons — like Ruth Poratat Morgan Stanley,Joan S. Solotar of the Blackstone Group,Edith W. Cooper of Goldman Sachs andCecelia Stewart ofCitigroup —are the latest generation of women making it in a man's world. Readthe complete NY TImes DealB%k article by Andrew Ross Sorkin.