AFP, London :
There had never been much doubt that in London’s testosterone-fuelled financial sector female workers’ salaries lagged far behind those of their mostly male colleagues.
Now this has been confirmed in black and white after the British government forced UK-based banks to publish their own so-called gender pay gaps.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government demanded that individual financial institutions reveal wage differentials between men and women across all employees-from back-office staff to highly-paid traders and board members.
The results are unflattering for an industry that has long been marked by male-filled boardrooms and trading floors.
Men employed in London’s ‘City’ financial district earn significantly more per hour than women excluding bonuses, according to the banks’ data.
May is eager to see a change in the gender gap, or percentage difference between the average male salary and the average female salary-in an eventual push toward pay equality, meaning the same money for a comparable job.
However, women still face an uphill struggle because nationwide across all sectors, British men earn 18.4 percent more per hour on average than women, according to official data from the Office for National Statistics.
Among retail banks, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group — both rescued with vast amounts of taxpayers’ cash during the global financial crisis-have pay gaps of 37.2 percent and 33 percent, respectively.
Among institutions that are more focused on investment banking, the difference is even wider.
Britain’s Barclays has a gap of 48 percent at its London-based investment bank unit. The equivalent is 55.5 percent at US giant Goldman Sachs.
The gap at HSBC’s entire UK operations, including investment and retail, is 59 percent.
There had never been much doubt that in London’s testosterone-fuelled financial sector female workers’ salaries lagged far behind those of their mostly male colleagues.
Now this has been confirmed in black and white after the British government forced UK-based banks to publish their own so-called gender pay gaps.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government demanded that individual financial institutions reveal wage differentials between men and women across all employees-from back-office staff to highly-paid traders and board members.
The results are unflattering for an industry that has long been marked by male-filled boardrooms and trading floors.
Men employed in London’s ‘City’ financial district earn significantly more per hour than women excluding bonuses, according to the banks’ data.
May is eager to see a change in the gender gap, or percentage difference between the average male salary and the average female salary-in an eventual push toward pay equality, meaning the same money for a comparable job.
However, women still face an uphill struggle because nationwide across all sectors, British men earn 18.4 percent more per hour on average than women, according to official data from the Office for National Statistics.
Among retail banks, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group — both rescued with vast amounts of taxpayers’ cash during the global financial crisis-have pay gaps of 37.2 percent and 33 percent, respectively.
Among institutions that are more focused on investment banking, the difference is even wider.
Britain’s Barclays has a gap of 48 percent at its London-based investment bank unit. The equivalent is 55.5 percent at US giant Goldman Sachs.
The gap at HSBC’s entire UK operations, including investment and retail, is 59 percent.
