Close to five years after the government’s Women in Finance Charter was launched as a voluntary agreement committing firms to gender diversity targets, progress towards gender equality in the financial sector remains ‘frustratingly slow,’ Aviva chief executive Amanda Blanc said, adding that women and business “cannot afford to wait 30 years [when] we can achieve this in 10.”
More than 400 city institutions signed up to the Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter in 2016, including Aviva, the Bank of England, London Stock Exchange, Morgan Stanley, and Nationwide.
Despite the massive support, research by the Women in Finance Taskforce found the proportion of senior management among the 400 signatories who were female increased by just one percentage point between 2018 and 2020, from 31% to 32%.
It calculated that at this rate, it would take the financial services industry another 30 years to achieve gender parity at senior levels.
“We’ve got to work quicker and harder, for the sake of women, for the sake of society and because a more diverse business is a more productive and innovative one,” said Blanc, who has run Aviva since July 2020 and was appointed by the Treasury as the Women in Finance Charter champion a year ago.
She proposed measures to bridge the pay gap faster: mandating shortlists for senior positions with 50% female representation, greater use of psychometric testing in recruitment, removing male-biased recruitment advertising, creating diverse interview panels, and mid-career returner programmes to help women move back into work.
Blanc also recommended advertising all jobs as flexible, formal sponsorship programmes for women at all levels, and full-pay equal parental leave.
These proposals, drawn up by the taskforce in partnership with consultancy Bain & Company, addressed problems that surfaced based on interviews with bosses of financial firms, research, and more than 100 responses to a survey of the charter’s signatories.
Fifty-eight per cent of women said caring responsibilities have stopped them applying for promotion or a new job. Market researcher Ipsos UK and Business in the Community added that 19% have left a job because it was too hard to balance work and care.
While just over a third of all adults have caring responsibilities, the research found that they are not spread equally. Women accounted for 85% of sole carers for children and 65% of sole carers for older adults.
More people from ethnic minority backgrounds (42%) have caring responsibilities than from white backgrounds, The Guardian reported.
