Many Financial-Services Women Say UK Can't Bridge Wage Gap - Building Gender Balanced Business

• “Nearly half” of British financial-services women don’t believe the government can close the gender pay gap in the sector.

• Financial News reported the response from its third annual Women in Finance survey of 1, 100 women in the financial-services industry.

• The Dow Jones news service did not provide any greater details on the responses, which has us scratching our heads as to whether more than half of women did think the government could have an impact. We prefer concluding that the “nearly half” represents a plurality, with no effect or no opinion filling out the whole — that would be more journalistically honest of Financial News.

• The figures the service did provide were tangentially related: 45% of respondents said high-profile sex discrimination cases hurt women in the workplace (other, presumably, than successful complainants), while 32% said such cases had no impact.

• The report did provide some specific data related to discrimination: 43% of the women reported having suffered it. 63% said their gender was an impediment to their career success, 3 percentage points more than a year earlier, with 3 in 5 saying they needed to work harder than men to receive same recognition as a man.

• An Equality and Human Rights Commission report provides evidence that makes the 43% rate seem surprisingly low: Women make 39% less than men in the financial-services sector in base pay, but that gap surges to 47% including performance-related pay, bonuses and overtime, as the difference solely for bonuses and performance-related pay is 80%.

• By the way — and Financial News thought this important enough to include in its own report of its survey, a summary that was otherwise pretty skimpy on data — 71% of the respondents were childless, and (only) 60% said that it would be a struggle, but possible, to have both a successful financial-services career and a family. How many thought it impossible or easy, well, Financial News did not say.

Financial News’ report on its survey