Goldman Sachs has become the latest bank to publish a yawning gender pay gap, underscoring just how male dominated the world of finance still is – especially at the most senior level.
The company, which employs around 6,000 people in the UK, on Friday reported a mean gender pay gap in Britain for its international business of 55.5 per cent and a mean bonus gap for the unit of 72.2 per cent.
Earlier this week, rival HSBC admitted to having a mean gender pay gap of 59 per cent – the largest yet for a British financial firm, though some are yet to report ahead of an early April government deadline for all firms employing at least 250 people to divulge their figures. The national average is around 18 per cent.
Like other companies, Goldman used its report to commit to doing more to close the gap.
“As a global firm, the advancement of women in the workplace is top of mind for us. We have made progress over the years,” it said, “yet we have significant work to do.”
Also in common with other financial institutions, it attributed the gap to men vastly outnumbering women in the highest pay brackets. Data on the company’s website shows that women account for 62.4 per cent of jobs in the lowest quartile when broken down by pay, but just 17 per cent of all the jobs in the highest quartile.
“In our last global partner class, we had our highest ever proportion of women promotes, but it is not enough,” the firm said, referring to the top seniority level of the workforce.
“We hold ourselves accountable for creating a working environment in which all individuals can achieve their full potential and progress to the most senior levels of the firm,” it added.
Banks across the City and on Wall Street have for some time been trying to shake their reputation of having a deeply-entrenched gender bias. On Thursday, Goldman in an internal memo posted on its website said that it had set a target for women to account for half of its new analysts – or entry level jobs – by 2021.
Chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and president and co-chief operating officer David Solomon jointly wrote in the memo that they want to achieve greater diversity across the firm more broadly – both in terms of gender and ethnicity.
Back in January, Mr Solomon, who is widely tipped to succeed Mr Blankfein as CEO, said that despite some progress in recent years, Goldman, which is the fifth largest US bank, had not raised the proportion of women in its workforce to an adequate level, particularly across senior management.
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