Women in Finance: we've still got a way to go

We’re halfway through 2024, and whilst we shouldn’t need to be still having the conversation around the gender wage gap, and how women are kept out of boardrooms and passed over for opportunities, we are. Many businesses shout the words equality and diversity from various rooftops, yet despite these good intentions, these gaps and deficiencies still exist. Let’s be fair, it’s not all doom and gloom. The gender pay gap has been closing year by year, due to changes in legislation requiring businesses with over 250 staff to report on their salaries. There are more women than ever before in senior leadership roles, and whilst we no longer scoff at the idea of women in the boardroom, there’s still work to be done. Here at Sewell Wallis, we like to talk about difficult topics, and we like to get everyone involved in these conversations.

Deloitte published a report in April of this year which offered some catalysing points for discussions on women within a finance function, and how to continue removing the obstacles that remain for women in the finance industry. They conducted online research with 72 participants, across a number of major industries, experience levels and company sizes.

Why should we keep pushing for diversity in the finance sector?

In short, it’s beneficial for everyone. Diversity in the workplace has a positive impact on everyone within the organisation. Empowering women to develop their careers and take on senior roles has several benefits: for the employee, the business and the people within it, and the wider world around them. How so?

A Harvard Business Review study of 5000 companies across 100 countries revealed that working under a female leader could potentially increase employee job satisfaction. This is due to compassionate leaders typically being more supportive; women were rated higher in compassion – 55% as opposed to men at 27%, with one woman noting that whilst she’d had supportive male bosses, working for a woman was a “real game changer” as she advocated for her more. There are growing beliefs that find organisations with a greater representation of women in senior leadership roles outperform their competitors and achieve higher average revenue. There’s also the fact that gender diversity leads to diverse thinking, makes the conversation richer and creates a better output for businesses.

What are the challenges we face in the finance industry today?

In 2023, just over a quarter of FTSE 100 CFOs were women. This isn’t good enough. Our team is full of finance recruiters who all know talented women with extensive finance experience, who are clearly ready for the next step up, so what’s stopping them?

One of the big ones is the pay gap. The average gap is nearly 15%, with the financial services industry having the largest at 31.2%. It has been reported that some banks pay women less than two-thirds of men’s earnings. The other issue is that while women hold 40.5% of board positions within FTSE 100 businesses, 92.1% of those are non-executive positions; these businesses have women at the table, but they’re not in key strategic roles where they can shape the future of the company they work for.

How do we fix it?

The approach to getting more women into finance needs to be twofold; we need to ensure we’re attracting women into the finance sector, and we need to retain them. Let's tackle recruitment first.

Diverse workforces mean that businesses experience fresh perspectives, and innovation, and to achieve this goal, we need to ensure that any barriers that exist in the talent pipeline are broken down. Gender bias, whether conscious or not, pops up throughout the recruitment process, including in job adverts, interviews and new-starter onboarding, and we need to pay close attention to how we craft these recruitment methods.

Your adverts don’t feel inclusive

The language we use changes how adverts are perceived by readers. Nearly a third of people perceive that roles within finance are positioned towards male applicants. Leadership roles in particular are often written in masculine language, which can influence who applies.

Your hiring team has an unconscious bias

Deloitte’s research found a prevalent unconscious bias against women with children during hiring processes. Having children and maternity leave are still seen as career barriers. As one senior civil servant noted in the survey, “having to go to nursery does not make you less capable”. Addressing this bias necessitates offering flexible working options.

Finance is still perceived by many as a male-dominated field – it can have long, demanding hours, which may lead to bias in favour of men during the selection process.

Improving the issues

Organisations must actively work on how to attract women into finance roles, to ensure men are not the default option. There are straightforward steps to help you work towards this.

Use a gender decoder to check your adverts are neutral and don’t lean too hard to either a masculine or feminine angle. At Sewell Wallis, we use this one - https://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/. This is important because research has shown that women felt that job adverts with masculine-coded language were less appealing and that they belonged less in those occupations. For men, feminine-coded adverts were only slightly less appealing and had little to no effect on how many men applied for the role.

Including your benefits in your remuneration package can also have a positive impact on balancing your job adverts. Flexible working options increase the perception of inclusion by 93%, and demonstrate an organisational commitment to an inclusive environment for all. Jobs advertised as ‘full-time and in-person’ can result in lower applications, particularly from female candidates, who, more often than not, are still shouldered, with childcare responsibilities.

You should also consider providing training to staff who will be involved in recruitment to ensure they are aware of unconscious bias and that they can draft job descriptions and make hiring choices that are inclusive. It’s also worth providing some education around how to actually be an ally – there are often people within a workplace who want to help but aren’t sure how to go about it.

We asked Lawrie, one of our senior finance consultants, about his experience recruiting into a range of businesses across the region.

“I have worked with a wide range of women in the finance industry, and whilst I’ve not personally noticed a big wage gap at the more junior end of the industry, which is my focus, the research from Deloitte speaks to a wider issue. There shouldn’t be a discrepancy between how people who work in the same industry and roles are paid or treat within the workplace, but there is. I think that it’s evident from the study that there’s a long way to go, and I feel we need more men to stand up and show that they’re allies for women in the finance industry. Leadership teams would do well to educate their hiring managers on how to actively attract diverse talent, and making sure that maternity leave, return to work and flexible working policies are up to date and suitable for everyone will help with this.”

Like Lawrie, we’re passionate about women getting the shots they deserve in the finance sector. If you’d like to work with a progressive group of consultants to work on how to improve the inclusivity of your recruitment processes, get in touch with us today.