Sexism in the City: London investment and insurance firms still struggling with gender pay gap, MPs told
The financial sector continues to struggle with a gender pay gap and lack of female representation at senior levels, trade body representatives have told MPs, as the Treasury Committee investigates sexism in Canada.
The committee urged City bosses in 2018 to abolish the “alpha male” culture and end the stigma around women’s flexible working.
It is now scrutinising the sector’s progress since these recommendations and evaluating the impact of the Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter.
Conservative MP and committee chair Harriett Baldwin on Wednesday noted an “almost unanimous point of view that really nothing has changed since 2018, that things have flatlined, that this is still an industry where it can be a struggle, particularly for women, to progress to the highest echelons”.
Baldwin added: “It’s an area where there continues to be a very wide gender pay gap. It continues to be an industry where we hear concerning stories about culture.”
Karen Northey, a director at the Investment Association, told the committee that despite “some areas of improvement”, there was still a pay gap across the investment management industry.
She noted that from 2018 to 2022, the average pay gap fell from 31 per cent to 24 per cent, while the gap for bonuses fell from 65 per cent to 57 per cent.
Northey said these figures were “by no means enough of an improvement” but that “at least it’s going in the right direction”.
Yvonne Braun, a director at the Association of British Insurers, said the industry’s pay gap stood at 23 per cent, down from 29 per cent in 2018.
She added that representation of women on boards increased from 19 per cent in 2017 to 32 per cent in 2022, with women as a proportion of executives going from 22 per cent to 29 per cent over the same period.
However, Braun noted that the proportion of entry-level roles held by women in insurance is 58 per cent.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say nothing has changed since 2018,” said Sarah Boon, a managing director at banking trade body UK Finance. “There’s definitely more that can be done, but I do think there has been change.”
She added that women have particularly benefited from an increased focus on flexible working and firms removing a culture of silence around menopause.