COMP NEWS – Top financial firms in the UK pay women less than their male counterparts on average, according to new salary data.
LONDON, April 5 (Reuters) – Some of Britain’s top financial firms pay women 28.8% less on average than male counterparts, salary data from 21 companies reviewed by Reuters shows, even though they say they are striving to hire more females for higher-paid, senior roles.Banks, asset managers and insurers across the UK have committed to narrowing long-standing gender pay gaps, which they largely attribute to there being more men in top jobs that come with generous bonuses, while a greater proportion of women are in lower-paid, part-time or junior jobs, with smaller bonuses or none at all.The gap for the top financial services firms has narrowed by two percentage points from a year ago, according to Reuters calculations based on the salary data, but remains far higher than the mean average for all industries in Britain which was 10.7% last year, based on a UK government survey.Since 2017 businesses with more than 250 employees in Britain have been required to disclose the difference between the pay and bonuses of male and female staff. They had a deadline of April 4 to disclose data for April 2023.Many of the big finance companies struggle to attract and retain female talent in high-powered roles, hampering the rate of change across the industry and in some individual cases the situation has not improved.
Part of the reason lies in a “child tax,” where women are more likely to stay home and take care of their newborn children than male partners.
All companies said in their gender pay gap reports that differences reflected the under-representation of women in senior roles and that they were taking steps to address this.The UK government launched the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter in March 2016 to encourage the financial services industry to improve gender balance in senior ranks.The charter now has more than 400 signatories covering about 1.3 million employees.An annual review published last month with think tank New Financial showed that the signatories had increased female representation in senior ranks to 35% on average in 2023, from 34% in 2022.At this pace, the average of those who signed up to the Charter should reach parity in 2038 but not in every sector, the report said.Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) suggests that most UK gender pay gaps reflect “child penalties”, with female average earnings falling sharply after becoming a parent.The IFS found that seven years after the birth of a first child, women’s earnings were on average less than half of men’s.
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