Goldman Sachs offers UK staff gender-reassignment and fertility treatment as it tackles boys’ club image
Goldman Sachs is offering its staff in London gender-reassignment surgery and fertility treatment, as it pushes on perks in an attempt to encourage women to work at the firm.
The giant investment bank’s roughly 6,000 UK staff will have access to treatment and consultation for gender dysphoria, and an assisted fertility benefit that will include IVF treatment.
Chief executive Richard Gnodde told London staff about the new perks last week. The UK office’s new position on gender-reassignment surgery bringing it up to speed with Goldman’s US office, which has had the policy since 2008, and in line with Silicon Valley giants such as Netflix, and management consultancy giant Accenture.
Its offer of funded fertility consultations and treatments is part of a drive to fix the firm’s gender imbalance. It has frequently been labelled as an old boys’ club, and has a yawning mean gender pay gap of 72.2 per cent in Europe. The firm has said there is “significant work to do” for it to correct its gender imbalances, which include a hugely male-dominated partner class.
Goldman has announced a target to have half its newly-recruited analysts be women by 2021.
Announcing the fertility treatments, the firm said: “We believe we are the first to introduce a guided pathway to ensure that in addition to providing fertility benefits, we are also partnering with a clinical group to ensure employees and dependants have support through process.”