UK Finance Sector Has Double the National Pay Gap - Building Gender Balanced Business

• As if there weren’t enough to complain about in the finance sector, it has one of the grossest pay gaps among industries, according to a UK Equality and Human Rights Commission report.

• Even as women are losing jobs at a disproportionate in finance, the wage gap is twice that of the national average. And the biggest gaps in the industry were in the plum fund management, stockbroking and future trading fields.

• One cause of the disparity is that the gender gap in annual incentive pay for full-time employees was 79%.

• 7 in 10 men in the sector earned more than £29,400 in 2007-08, while 7 in 10 women made less than £29,500. Women made up only 28% of professionals in the industry vs. 42% nationwide, and they held only 11% of senior management spots vs 28% nationwide.

• Trevor Phillips, chairman of the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: “We are losing or not taking advantage of talented women from a crucial industry – something we can ill afford in these troubled time. There is a culture which somehow assumes that women will take the lowest status jobs and that’s where they belong.”

The BBC report