that these flashy announcements and political demonstrations may in fact be mere façade concealing the disheartening cultural assumptions which continue to prevail even in the most developed economies.
Following a study conducted on a sample of ten large investment banks in the United Kingdom, the New York-based media company found that by Early-2020, women in these financial institutions are being paid just 56 per cent of what their male colleagues make. According to the report, as of April last year, the average difference between male and female hourly wages was 44.5 per cent, a slight decline from the gap from a year earlier, at 45.2 per cent.
Among the organisations that were sampled, HSBC Bank Plc was found to be the organisation with the largest salary divide at 54.4 per cent, while just 9 per cent of those in its top pay quartile are women.
“We’re caught in a compliance phase,” Professor Grace Lordan, founder of the Inclusion Initiative at the London School of Economics and Political Science, told Bloomberg. “To reach the next stage we really need a culture change.”
Since 2017, the reporting of gender pay gap has been compulsory in Britain and it has consistently revealed that women are paid significantly less than men. However, in conducting its study, Bloomberg did not consider experience or location, and did not compare the pay of men and women who are engaged in the same jobs. It only set out to discover who holds the highest paying jobs, a majority of which are held by men in most companies.
